Chinese state-sponsored hack footage taken offline

Security researchers have reported that the Chinese TV documentary which accidentally implicated the government for the first time in hacking attacks on Western targets has been taken off the TV channel's web site.

F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hyppönen revealed the takedown in a blog post, noting that all of the other TV programmes on the site still work as before.

The removal of the film, no doubt at the behest of the authorities, is the biggest indication yet that the short segment did indeed accurately depict a hack.

When the clip from a programme titled Military Technology: Internet Storm is Coming emerged online it became the first concrete indication that the state-sponsored hacking has been sanctioned by the People's Republic.

The clip showed software apparently written by the Information Engineering University of China's People's Liberation Army, which was designed specifically to launch attacks on the foreign web sites of religious movement Falun Gong, via the IP address of a US university.

Falun Gong has been banned for some time in China and members of the organisation have been targeted frequently in the past by the authorities.

It is thought that the clip may have sneaked through the final edit as the programme makers did not understand its significance.