In this morning’s paper was an article from the New York Times with more information on the cyberattack which led Google to reevaluate its business in China.
Among the revelations was this paragraph:
Peering inside that machine, company engineers actually saw evidence of the aftermath of the attacks, not only at Google, but also at at least 33 other companies, including Adobe Systems, Northrop Grumman and Juniper Networks, according to a government consultant who has spoken with the investigators.
While there are countless cyberattacks occurring at any moment, this sounds a lot like the attacks I discovered on my server in October. The way I identified them was that each one of them began with an innocent-looking Google search referral. Then the visitor would linger on my site for a bit before requesting an obscure blog post. I’ve been tracking these hits ever since.
I think I’ll alert Google to my web research and see if there’s anything I found that might help. I can’t imagine that Google doesn’t already have everything they need but you never know.