Baidu To Sue DNS Provider Following CyberAttack
A group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army hijacked Beijing-based Baidu on Jan 12 and rerouted visitors to a page specially created by the hackers, featuring the Iranian national flag, along with a message that said "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army."
The Iranian Cyber Army was the same group thought to be responsible for a similar attack on micro-blogging site Twitter in December.
During the Baidu.com cyberattack, users were prevented from accessing China's search engine for hours. Security researchers say that the perpetrators changed Baidu's DNS records in order to redirect traffic to the new site.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed in a New York federal court, Baidu said it was seeking damages for violation of the Lanham Act, citing trademark infringement, breach of contract and "gross negligence," according to court documents.
Baidu declined to specify the extent of the losses or how much it was seeking in damages.
Meanwhile. the lawsuit follows the sudden resignation of Baidu CTO Yinan Li, who is leaving for "personal reasons," according to a company statement.
China's search engine Baidu currently has the lion's share of the country's search engine marketshare at 70 percent, according to the Chinese news agency site Xinhuanet.com.