Spy Hackery

Interesting account of working in a world where Chinese espionage can strike anyone.:

For weeks, friends and colleagues complained I had not answered their e-mail messages. I swore I had not received them.

My e-mail program began crashing almost daily. But only when all my contacts disappeared for the second time did suspicion push me to act.

I dug deep inside my Yahoo settings, and I shuddered. Incoming messages had been forwarding to an unfamiliar e-mail address, one presumably typed in by intruders who had gained access to my account.

I’d been hacked.

That phrase has been popping up a lot lately on Web chats and at dinner parties in China, where scores of foreign reporters have discovered intrusions into their e-mail accounts.

But unlike malware that trawls for bank account passwords or phishing gambits that peddle lonely and sexually adventurous Russian women, these cyberattacks appear inspired by good old-fashioned espionage.

...Even if poorly understood, the intrusions have left many reporters, including myself, feeling unnerved. One reporter, a friend with many years of experience in China, said she felt violated and angry after learning her e-mail account was compromised. Even more frustrating, she said, was not knowing whom to blame.

“I worry about Chinese friends who may have written things they could come to regret,” she said, asking that her name and affiliation not be printed for fear of drawing the attention of freelance hackers. “I’d be more relieved if they had just stolen my credit card information.”