Chinese search engine Baidu sues US company over hacking attack

The move in a New York law court comes a week after Google threatened to pull out of China if the Chinese government did not allow it to operate its local site free of the country's onerous censorship laws.

Baidu.com, which accounts for two-thirds of China's internet searches, said it had filed the claim against Register.com, accusing the US company of "gross negligence" in failing to prevent the attacks which lasted for four hours on January 12.

Twitter, the popular microblogging site which is banned in China, was subjected to a similar attack a few weeks earlier.

Following the attack on Baidu, Chinese media carried embarrassing snapshots of the company's home page showing a message "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army" against a dark background and the Iranian flag.

The regime in Tehran, which is currently under pressure from pro-democracy forces using social networking sites like Twitter, is a key Middle Eastern ally and oil supplier to China.

"Today Baidu filed a lawsuit against its domain name registration service provider Register.com, Inc. in a US court in New York, seeking damages over the incident of Baidu's service interruption last week," the Chinese firm said in a statement.

Baidu said the software behind its domain name had been "unlawfully and maliciously altered" as a result of the "gross negligence" of Register.com.

This led to "users from many places around the world being unable to access the Baidu website for a number of hours and causing serious damages to Baidu".

Register.com is a leading domain registration service that manages more than 2.5 million domain names, according to the company's website.

The Chinese legal action comes as the row between Google and the Chinese government continues to remain unresolved, with analysts awaiting the outcome of talks between the two parties in the coming days and weeks.

The fate of the world's largest search engine in China appeared to remain in limbo, with Chinese employees of the company still reporting to work as they wait for the authorities in Beijing and executives from their parent-company in San Francisco to decide how to proceed.

A posting on the Chinese company's official blog by two Google executives said that Google China was continuing to provide products and services 'as usual' to its users and partners.

However the uncertainty surrounding the company's status in China appeared to be responsible for a decision to postpone the launch of two smartphone mobile handsets in China powered by Google's Android operating system.

The future of Google in China remains the subject of intense speculation, with some industry analysts arguing that the company might close its search engine but maintain parts of its business and advertising services that do not clash with the censorship regime.

However given Google's extremely public rebuke of the Chinese government's censorship practices, which have tightened considerably in the last year, many China specialists think it unlikely that a compromise can be reached.