China’s leading search engine Baidu appeared to have been hacked again on Friday, as tensions between Beijing and Washington remained high over Internet freedom. The latest hacking attempt caused a number of links to pornographic websites to appear in Baidu’s search results, according to the Southern Metropolis News.
China has been cracking on pornography in recent years, vowing to weed out undesirable content from the Internet. Last year, nearly 5,400 suspects were arrested for online pornography-related offenses and some 15,000 pornographic websites were shut down or blocked, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The authorities have even started offering rewards of up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,500) since last month to Internet users who report offenses.
A Baidu publicity employee confirmed on Friday that the firm had received several complaints about the malfunction, but he declined to comment on whether its website had been hacked, reported Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper.
“We are handling this issue now and we can’t confirm if this is a hacking incident,” the employee, who wanted to remain anonymous, was quoted as saying by the Post.
It would the second time this month that Baidu has been attacked by hackers. A group calling itself the “Iranian Cyber Army” carried out an attack on Jan 12 that left users unable to access the search engine for at least four hours. Baidu has sued United States-based Web firm Register.com over the incident, claiming damages.