Politics

NYT alleges Chinese hackers have attacked it

Josh Peterson Tech Editor
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Chinese hackers infiltrated computers systems at the New York Times over the past four months, stealing the passwords of employees and reporters, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The attackers have been expelled from the system and no sensitive documents, emails or customer data were downloaded or copied by the attackers, according to security experts hired by the Times.

“The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings,” the paper reports.

While the Chinese Ministry of National Defense denied the allegations, calling them “unprofessional and baseless,” the Times maintains that the attacks were part of a larger espionage campaign against American media companies. Bloomberg suffered a similar attack in 2012.

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