A Los Angeles-based law firm, Gipson Hoffman & Pancione, epresenting Santa Barbara-based software maker CYBERsitter, LLC, in a $2.2 billion software piracy action filed last week against the People’s Republic of China.
The firm’s initial investigation has shown that at least some of the e-mail messages originated in China and that some of the malware payloads were on servers in China. The attacks have been reported to the FBI and members of the House Intelligence Committee.
“It would be a very strange coincidence indeed if the attacks were unrelated to the lawsuit, because our firm does not ordinarily in the course of business experience these kinds of attacks,” said Gregory Fayer, an attorney at Gipson Hoffman & Pancione.
The attacks follow Google’s startling announcement on Tuesday that hackers it believed were acting on behalf of China penetrated the defenses of 34 large companies, including Google and Adobe Systems. Google has pledged to stop honoring the Chinese government’s demands to filter search results on Google.cn and has threatened to exit the world’s biggest internet market altogether.
Gipson Hoffman & Pancione has yet to receive any response from the Chinese government or the companies named in its lawsuit, which seeks $2.2 billion in lost sales for the 56 million copies of Green Dam distributed in China.
China says Green Dam is intended to block pornographic and other harmful content, but critics say it also blocks politically sensitive information and is merely an extension of Beijing’s Internet censorship system.