Though similar to the late-2009 attacks against Google (GOOG), this effort was a bit less sophisticated. Still, it appears to have been politically motivated and perpetrated by folks with some sort of allegiance to the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

“The malware infected the computers of potentially tens of thousands of users who downloaded Vietnamese keyboard language software and possibly other legitimate software that was altered to infect users,” Neel Mehta of Google’s security team wrote in a blog post describing the attack.

“While the malware itself was not especially sophisticated,” Mehta added, “it has nonetheless been used for damaging purposes. These infected machines have been used both to spy on their owners as well as participate in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against blogs containing messages of political dissent.”

Which is frightening, because a number of Vietnamese Internet activists have already been imprisoned for attacking Chinese involvement in the bauxite mining project.

[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]

“Ten of the 13 root name servers in the world are located in the US. They are the top hierarchy of the Internet, which means by controlling them, the US can define the freedom of the Internet. How can Clinton guarantee you a freedom if her country has the power to unplug you?”

– Yu Wanli, an expert on international studies at Peking University

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech on Internet censorship Thursday and her call for an investigation into charges that Chinese-backed hackers attacked Google have met with a bristling and indignant response from Beijing.

In a statement posted to China’s foreign ministry Web site, Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said the United States should “cease using so-called Internet freedom to make groundless accusations against China. The US has criticised China’s policies to administer the internet, and insinuated that China restricts internet freedom. This runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations. We urge the United States to respect the facts….China’s Internet is open.”

Well, that’s an interesting perspective on the country’s legendary Internet filtering system. Evidently, the vast infrastructure of technology that has made online dissent an impossibility doesn’t exist!

Ma’s criticism of Clinton was echoed in the China’s state-run media, which refers to the current debacle as “the Google farce.” An editorial in the Global Times today denounced Clinton’s call for free access to the Internet to be a foreign policy matter as a form of “information imperialism.”

“The U.S. campaign for uncensored and free flow of information on an unrestricted Internet is a disguised attempt to impose its values on other cultures in the name of democracy,” the editorial reads. “The U.S. government’s ideological imposition is unacceptable and, for that reason, will not be allowed to succeed.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Clinton Calls on China to Probe Google Hack
• China to Google: No Worries, We Were Planning to Clone Those Android Phones Anyway
• U.S. State Department to Complain to China About Google Hack. Not That China’s Going to Listen.
• Microsoft: “Don’t Be Evil” Is Google’s Motto, Not Ours
• China’s “New Approach” to Google: Bai-Bai
• What’s the Chinese Word for Bing? Google Threatens to Leave China.

Beginning Sept. 1, animated beat cops will begin patrolling the nation’s 13 top portals, warning citizens away from material the ruling Communist Party finds politically or morally threatening.

According to the Beijing Public Security Ministry, the Sanrio-esque characters will begin showing up on all sites that are registered with the government by the end of the year. “We will continue to promote new images of the virtual police and update our Internet security tips in an effort to make the image of the virtual police more user-friendly and more in tune with how Web surfers use the Internet,” it said.

Beginning Sept. 1, animated beat cops will begin patrolling the nation’s 13 top portals, warning citizens away from material the ruling Communist Party finds politically or morally threatening.

According to the Beijing Public Security Ministry, the Sanrio-esque characters will begin showing up on all sites that are registered with the government by the end of the year. “We will continue to promote new images of the virtual police and update our Internet security tips in an effort to make the image of the virtual police more user-friendly and more in tune with how Web surfers use the Internet,” it said.