Baidu sues over hacking

2010-01-20 12:24

Shanghai - China's top search engine, Baidu Inc, filed a lawsuit against its US-based domain name service provider on Wednesday after a cyber attack interrupted its web services last week.

Hackers calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army briefly hijacked Baidu's home page on January 12, weeks after doing the same thing to popular micro-blogging site Twitter.

Baidu said it was seeking damages from Register.com, its US service provider, after web users around the world were unable to access its search engine for at least four hours.

"As a result of the gross negligence of Register.com Inc, the domain name resolution of www.baidu.com was unlawfully and maliciously altered," said Baidu in a statement.

Following the cyber attack, media carried snapshots of Baidu's home page showing a message "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army," against a dark background and the flag of Iran.

Outraged Chinese hackers retaliated by attacking Iran-based websites the following day.

Baidu, which holds the greatest share of the Chinese online search market, vaulted into greater prominence after Google's shock announcement last week that it may leave China over censorship hacking concerns.

- Reuters

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