Erictric

How The January Baidu Hacking Happened

Back on January 11th, 2010, we reported that China’s most popular search engine, Baidu, had fallen victim to a hacking by the Iranian Cyber Army. We didn’t know much at the time — but now we know more, and as promised, this article will detail how such a large site was compromised.

For nearly two days, Baidu’s services were unavailable to the public due to a DNS issue — which of course was planned. In essence, an entity had contacted Baidu’s domain name registrar via live chat, Register.com, and ultimately requested the domain name contact email to be changed. More »

Baidu Share Prices Spike Amid Google/China Fiasco

Early morning stock trading in China shows the effects of Google’s recent announcement that they would no longer be filtering search results. That’s because Google shares have suck down 2.1% or $12.45/share to $578.03. Interestingly, Google’s number one competition in China, Baidu, has seen their shares soar upward. The Chinese search engine (who mind you, has no problem filtering search results) saw share prices increase a whopping 16.6%, or $64.01/share to $450.50.

Google is threatening to leave China if the government does not consent to the company not filtering search results, leaving many shareholders concerned about where the business is going.

If one thing’s for sure — Google’s getting more press than they could have asked for.

[ via Barron's ]

Baidu.com Goes Under Attack, Gets Hacked By ‘Iranian Cyber Army’

Twitter user Budi Putra has managed to snap a screenshot of China’s number one search engine at its very knees — hacked by what’s been called the ‘Iranian Cyber Army’. The site was returned to a normal state a little under two hours after the attack, but is taking ages to load — if at all.

The page displayed by the ICA features Arabic writing which we cannot make out, a flag, a map, and big red letters that read: “THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY.”

It’s an absolute incredible feat, hacking a major site — and certainly a major embarrassment. Just last month, the same group managed to hack Twitter.

We’re learning the website is accessible just fine from China — but other parts of the world may have trouble accessing services. We’ll post more when we learn more.

In the meantime, are you able to access Baidu.com?

Baidu Officially Announces Ad-Supported Video Service

Soon, Chinese search giant Baidu will soon make available an ad-supported video service in the near future, reports Robin Wauters from TechCrunch. The story comes as a follow-up to an original Reuters report which highlighted Baidu’s desire to create a video service.

Make no mistake though, the company does not intend to put in place a video sharing site like YouTube. Instead, Baidu is aiming towards a Hulu-like model, working with top networks to bring end users TV shows, movies, and the likes. The company itself is investing $10 million, and is backed by an additional $60 million thanks to Providence Equity Partners, who also funded Hulu.

Details as to when the service will be made available is not known currently, but we’ll bring that to you when we learn about it.

Baidu.com to Install Mobile Search App on Many Mobile Handsets

You may have heard of Baidu.com before. It’s essentially China’s equivalent to Google. The website currently takes position 9 on the most popular sites in the world (according to Alexa charts), and ranks in unsurprisingly at the number one position in China.

But the search engine is certainly looking to expand into the hands of more users — literally. Baidu has wrapped up deals with top handset manufacturers in China to pre-install the application on mobile devices. No word on when we’ll be seeing finalized versions of the app in the hands of consumers.

The application is currently in beta, and is the “most important product in Baidu’s mobile strategy,” said a Baidu representative in an e-mail Friday night to PC World.

More on this as we get it.

Google China Loses President Kai-Fu Lee

Google China has lost its president, Kai-Fu Lee, in what appears to be a move to the next chapter in his life. The former Microsoft Corporate VP joined Google in 2005, and had hopes to take over Chinese search giant, Baidu. Baidu is the Google of China, with about a 60% market share.

According to a statement Lee made to CNET, “With a very strong leadership team in place, it seemed a very good moment for me to move to the next chapter in my career,” it appears as if Lee is working on some kid of start-up. This claim has been backed up by Lee’s PR people.

Let’s see what you’ve got, Lee.