China yesterday denied any state involvement in cyber attacks on Google and defended Internet censorship as necessary, as a row with Washington over the U.S. firm's threat to leave the country rumbled on. The statements from Beijing, carried in twin interviews on the state news agency Xinhua, came after the White House said Barack Obama, the U.S. President, was "troubled" by Google's claims that it had been attacked by China-based hackers. The U.S. Internet giant has threatened to abandon its Chinese search engine, and perhaps end all operations in the country over the cyber attacks.

A scheme that gives U.S. law enforcement authorities with a warrant access to networking equipment could also be exploited by illegal snoopers. Tom Cross, manager of X-Force research, a security unit at IBM, discovered this after reviewing details of a lawful intercept scheme used to access equipment made by the networking giant Cisco. Cross says he identified weaknesses in the communication protocol that could let hackers perform illegal wiretaps. Cross focused on Cisco because it's the only company to have made the details of its system public, but he believes similar vulnerabilities exist with other intercept schemes. "It's not just the router vendor and the [Internet service provider] who have an interest in how this interface is built," Cross said during a presentation at Black Hat DC, a computer-security conference held in Washington, DC. "We all do." Many networking and Internet companies have built backdoors into their systems to deal with a growing number of Internet wiretap requests. These backdoors provide members of law enforcement who have a warrant with immediate access to communications. But there is growing concern that these avenues could inadvertently make it easier for hackers to steal information. The espionage that prompted Google to consider pulling out of China last month drew attention to the existence of these wiretap backdoors after a prominent security expert suggested that such a system may have been used to infiltrate Google's network.

South Australia's Attorney-General has defended tougher laws on political comment made on the internet. During election periods, anyone posting comment or blogs must publish their real name and postcode. Michael Atkinson says it has long been a requirement that newspapers verify personal details for letters published during election periods. He says the new law, which has applied since early last month, ensures the public's right to know. "[It's really about] the right to know who's making a comment during an election period," he said. "It will only apply to newspapers and extensions of newspapers.

InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) has released a position paper rejecting centralised internet filtering as an acceptable approach for New Zealand. The paper is a response to the Department of Internal Affairs' Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System, InternetNZ says. The paper calls on the department to conduct a thorough study of the extent of access of child abuse material on the internet and the best ways of addressing it. "InternetNZ supports a safe environment for people online, and absolutely deplores the availability and use of child abuse material," says InternetNZ policy director Jordan Carter.