Saturday, July 16, 2011

Sony Rival Nintendo Also Reports a Cyber Attack on Its Servers

Nintendo recently announced publicly that it was targeted in yet another cyber attack. Since the start of this year there has been a rapid increase in cyber attacks of mostly data theft, but other kinds too. Though according to Nintendo, this time the targeted data was not compromised, in fact it was stated that no personal or company information was lost at all. Nintendo, famous for its gaming console Wii, made all these official announcements on Sunday.
Image representing Nintendo as depicted in Cru...Image via CrunchBase
The server on which the data of Nintendo Co. is stored, located within U.S., was illegally accessed a few weeks back, though the data was not compromised at all, confirmed company spokesperson Ken Toyoda said. Toyoda declared that "There were no third-party victims" either, while he refused to further explain the attack in detail. "But it is a fact there was some kind of possible hacking attack," he added. This damage could be form a series after the on-going large cyber attacks in recent days, especially in the case of Nintendo’s own market rival; Sony Corp.
Sony Corporation faced one of the most fierce cyber attacks, which stole such large chunk of data that it is being considered one of the largest data thefts since the advent of internet. The enormous amount of data included personal information, email addresses, names and birth dates. Such personal data of almost 100 million users, if not more, was stolen in the data theft resulting in the immediate suspension of the service. Service was kept out since April due to security reasons, recovery processing and installing better security measures for future. The network service was just recently returned after more than a month of outage. Meanwhile, Sony still faced several hack attacks to their local websites in many countries, including one attack at their Sony Pictures' website last week. It still remains extremely ambiguous, even after long-investigations of agencies like FBI, whether who or which organization is responsible for these hack attacks at Sony or Nintendo.

Chinese Warns That Google Could Hurt Itself by Making False Accusations

It was stated against Google Inc. in the Monday edition of state-run newspaper of China, largely influenced by the Chinese Communist Party, that the latest allegations of cyber hack attacks being originated from China were totally driven by politics. It further straight forwardly warned the Internet Search Giant that if such activates were not stopped, ultimately its own business might suffer. The article in the People’s Daily newspaper mentioned that "Google's accusations against China are fictitious and have ulterior motives and sinister intentions."
Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase
Google Inc. was largely accused of attempting to create disputes between China and the U.S., and intentionally trying to obstruct the cooperation between both the countries to fight cybercrime. It was officially announced by Google last week that it has finally traced the origin of the cyber spying hack attacks, launched in its emailing services, to be near the eastern city of Jinan in China. It was alleged that these spying hack attacks were targeted to victimize hundreds of users of Gmail, specially the U.S. government officials, military personnel and political activists. China has been extremely straight forwarded in this regard and refuted every allegation made, blaming it to be related to these attacks in one way or the other. The article further stated that "Google should not be drawn into international political conflicts and serve as a tool for political games, because one fears that if international political winds shift it might be sacrificed and suffer in the marketplace."

China Claims the hacking Allegations to Be “Unacceptable” And Promotes the Idea of International Conference

SINGAPORE - JUNE 3:  U.S. Secretary of Defense...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
The defense minister of China, Liang Guanglie, clearly refuted all the allegations made against China blaming it to be responsible for the Internet attacks on several foreign targets. Moreover, he also seconded the call of US and Britain to hold international talks to tighten the international cyber-security. He stated that "It is hard to attribute the real source of attacks and we need to work together to make sure that this security problem won't be a problem." He was speaking in a security forum in Singapore, when he declared that "actually in China we have also suffered quite a wide range and frequency of cyber-attacks." He added that "the Chinese government attaches importance also to cyber-security and stands firmly against all kinds of cyber-crimes."
China is being accused largely by the United States, Canada and several other nations, who allege that the Chinese government is backing these online hack attacks on their government agencies and companies. Just last week, Google Inc. allegedly exposed a cyber-spying attack supposedly initiated from somewhere in China, aimed to spy on the Gmail accounts of senior US officials, military personnel, journalists and Chinese political activists. Even the U.S. government stated on Friday that it is concerned regarding the Google's accusations towards Beijing, though the Chinese government still asserts that all the allegations, blaming it, are completely "unacceptable".
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