Yahoo sides with Google over China cyber attack

Yahoo sides with Google over China cyber attack
By Hibah Yousuf, staff reporterJanuary 13, 2010: 1:35 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Yahoo Inc. gave its support to rival Google Inc. Wednesday, denouncing an alleged cyber attack originating in China against Google's network infrastructure.

"We condemn any attempts to infiltrate company networks to obtain user information," a Yahoo representative said in an e-mail statement. "We stand aligned with Google that these kinds of attacks are deeply disturbing and strongly believe that the violation of user privacy is something that we as Internet pioneers must all oppose."

Google said late Tuesday that the attack's primary goal was to access Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The company said that the incident, as well as Chinese censorship rules, could force it to shut down its operations in China, which includes Google.cn.

The search giant's ongoing investigation suggests the attack targeted at least twenty other large companies from a variety of industries. Neither Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) nor Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) revealed whether Yahoo was among the victims.

"Yahoo does not generally disclose that type of information, but we take security very seriously and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach," Yahoo said.

Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), which launched a Chinese version of its search engine Bing in June, said that the company has "no indication that any of our mail properties have been compromised."
0:00 /3:04Yahoo eyes Chinese expansion

In 2005, Yahoo sold its business in China to Alibaba.com, China's largest e-commerce company. Yahoo maintains a 39% financial stake in the company but Yahoo no longer has "operational control or day-to-day management over the Yahoo! China business," according to a Yahoo spokeswoman.

Google did not have any response to Yahoo's statement.