Chinese Hacker Behind Google Attack Found

U.S. authorities have tracked down the hacker who wrote the code behind the attacks on Google last month.The man is a freelance security consultant with ties to the Chinese government and military. The Chinese government had access to his work, although the man stated he "would rather not have uniformed guys looking over his shoulder, but there is no way anyone of his skill level can get away…

The unidentified programmer had posted pieces of the exploit to a hacking forum, and Chinese officials had "special access" to his work, the financial times reported on Sunday. The programmer did not launch the attack, the report said, citing an anonymous researcher working for the U.S. government.

Last week, The New York Times reported that researchers had traced the attacks to computers at Shanghai Jiaotong University and Lanxiang Vocational School, which has ties to the Chinese military. However, officials at the schools have denied those claims.

Google announced on January 12 that its network had been compromised and e-mail accounts belonging to human rights activists in China had been targeted. As a result, Google said it would stop censoring search results in China and possibly leave the Chinese market altogether. The Chinese government subsequently denied any involvement in the attacks.

Microsoft issued a patch for the IE hole a week after acknowledging the vulnerability, and after exploit code for the hole had been released in the wild.