News media: The new frontline

Is cyberspace becoming a battleground between media outlets in the West and a rising power in the Far East?

Hacking is nothing new. Some do it for profit, others for secrets. Self-styled "hacktivist" groups such as Anonymous do it for causes they believe in. But what if the target is a newspaper and the hackers have a grudge? On January 30, the New York Times revealed that hackers based in China had waged a four-month-long cyber onslaught against the paper soon after it published an article exposing the fortune amassed by the family of outgoing premier Wen Jiabao, a fortune that for the Chinese Communist Party has turned out to be – quite literally – an embarrassment of riches. Soon after the Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post admitted that they too had been attacked. Bloomberg News and Associated Press are also on the list of media outlets targeted by China-based hackers, raising the spectre of a new front in the global cyber war – one that puts journalists and their sources in the firing line.