Hackers at frontline in China's cyberwar

Just hours before Google announced late on Tuesday that China-based hackers had attacked its systems last month, China's cyberwarriors were once more at work - this time attacking Iranian websites in retaliation for a hacker attack on the pages of a Chinese search engine. If Chinese hackers are busy, then governments in the US, Europe and east Asia are worried. They have warned for years of a growing security risk from Chinese cyber-attacks. Links to China's government or military have never been proved, and Beijing has fiercely denied that the authorities have anything to do with hacking activities. However, cybersecurity experts believe that both the government and different parts of the security apparatus use some hackers as freelance cyberwar agents and that beyond such clear co-operation, hacker communities see themselves as participants in a "people's war" to project China's national power.