China blames Internet outage on hacking attack

Tuesdays Internet outage in China is dividing experts over what caused the networking error, with authorities calling it a hacking attack, and others blaming it on the countrys censorship systems.

The outage briefly crippled the Internet in China, with many local websites inaccessible to users. User traffic was mysteriously redirected to a U.S.-based IP address belonging to a company that has hosted software capable of circumventing Chinas online censorship.

The networking error, which only lasted a few hours, affected at least two-thirds of Chinas websites, according to Qihoo 360, a software security vendor in the country.

On Wednesday, local authorities said a preliminary investigation found that a hacking attack caused the outage. Chinas National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team is continuing to investigate the matter.

On the same day, Chinas state-controlled Xinhua News Agency published a story quoting security experts whodemanded authorities do more to protect the nations Internet infrastructure.

Others experts, however, believe the error may have been caused by a glitch in Chinas notorious censorship systems, also known as The Great Firewall.

China routinely blocks sites with content critical of the nations government, including Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times. Tuesdays Internet outage, however, rerouted traffic to an IP address belonging to Dynamic Internet Technology, a U.S. company whose site is also blocked by authorities.

DIT could not be reached immediately for comment. But the companys clients include The Epoch Times, a publication banned in China. It also hosts Freegate software that can help Chinese Internet users view sites blocked in the country.

Some are speculating that hackers hijacked a root DNS (Domain Name System) server in China to reroute all user traffic, said GreatFire.org, a group that monitors Chinas Internet and opposes the nations censorship.

But in a Wednesday posting, GreatFire.org dismissed such claims, noting that a public DNS server operated by Google had also been affected by the networking error. During the outage, users trying to access the Google DNS server from China were also rerouted to the IP address from Dynamic Internet Technology.

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China blames Internet outage on hacking attack