WikiLeaks cables show China ordered Google hack

The hacking attacks that caused Google to temporarily suspend services on the Chinese mainland came on government orders, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

The confidential US government documents reveal that the attacks on Google's servers were ordered by a member of the Chinese politburo.

An unnamed Chinese source quoted in The New York Times said that the attacks were carried out by a team of government officials, private companies and individuals hired for their hacking skills.

The source claims that the Chinese government has been routinely hacking into the computers of the American government and its Western allies, along with the Dalai Lama and a number of American businesses, since 2002.

The attacks on Google and others occurred in December 2009, in what came to be known as Operation Aurora. The US State Department showed strong support at the time for Google's withdrawal from China.

The documents came to light during the first trawls through the 251,287 US embassy cables copied from the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, the intranet service run by the US Department of Defense, and released globally by WikiLeaks.

"We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorised disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information," said the US State Department in a statement.