Online privacy tools likely compromised by Chinese hackers

Attacks likely originating in China indicate that two online privacy tools – Great Firewall-hopping Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and the anonymity software Tor – have been circumvented by hackers who use malicious code to steal to steal names, addresses and other personal information, The New York Times reported, citing findings from a researcher at Silicon valley security firm AlienVault. As long as visitors to certain websites frequented by Chinese journalists were also logged into one of 15 major Chinese sites such as Baidu or Alibaba-owned Taobao, hackers could take advantage of a server software vulnerability that these top mainland firms had apparently failed to patch.