'Hacker school' unfairly portrayed in US media

• Source: Global Times
• [22:09 February 25 2010]
• Comments

Illustration: Liu Rui

By Zhan Sheng

Recent New York Times articles have stirred up the "Chinese hacker" issue again, which has not only peeved Chinese authorities, but also brought fame to Lanxiang, a little known vocational school in Shandong Province in one of the articles.

The paper admitted minor technical errors in the story on Wednesday by pointing out mistakes in "the scrutiny of two Chinese educational institutions to which researchers have traced online attacks on American companies."

The correction said the report "misstated the location of Duke University's planned campus in China and the date that plans for that campus were announced."

Both the location and time were mistaken: "The campus will be in Kunshan, near Shanghai, not in Shanghai itself, and the plans were announced on Jan 22, not 'last year.'"

Yet there are more serious problems with the article than just these mistakes.

Microsoft rapidly responded that it couldn't make comments on reports that China's schools were tied to hacking. Duke, which runs a cooperation program with Shanghai Jiaotong University, also remained silent on the issue. Only the paper continued to investigate after the short apology. After quoting the two schools' negations, the paper exposed their ties with the Chinese military.

However, such "exposure" couldn't verify that the two schools were potential sources of hackers.

But the paper's reporters clearly need to do more research, since the story is made up largely of background information drawn from secondary sources. The article mentions that "in 2007, a prominent Chinese hacker with ties to China's Ministry of Security" gave a lecture at Jiaotong. But this information was just drawn from another book, Hacking in a Nutshell.

Second, the paper seems not to have conducted proper interviews with Lanxiang. As expected, the article quoted "the School's dean Mr Shao," who said humbly that the education in his school was not advanced enough to cultivate the best hackers in the world. The article says that Shao "would give only his last name."

US media often quote "an insider" or "an official who wouldn't give his name" to verify an authoritative piece of information, and give "extra protection" of insiders who may encounter persecution. The New York Times' report on Lanxiang is a good advertisement for the little known school.