Intel victim of cyberattack at same time as Google report

Intel said Tuesday it was the target of a cyberattack last month

NEW YORK — US computer chip giant Intel said Tuesday it was the target of a cyberattack last month at around the same time that Google reported that its systems had been probed by hackers based in China.
Intel, in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), did not directly link the "sophisticated" attack on its computers to those reported by Google.
"We regularly face attempts by others to gain unauthorized access through the Internet to our information technology systems by, for example, masquerading as authorized users or surreptitious introduction of software," the company said.
"One recent and sophisticated incident occurred in January 2010 around the same time as the recently publicized security incident reported by Google," the company said.
An Intel spokesman declined to provide further details about the attacks.
Google vowed in January to stop bowing to Internet censors in China in the wake of sophisticated cyberattacks aimed at the US firm's source code and Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists around the world.
Google said other US companies had also been targeted in the attacks which originated in China but declined to identify them.
Stacy Smith, Intel's chief financial officer, said meanwhile at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday that China was currently the company's second-largest market.
"I expect it to become our largest market relatively soon, in two or three or four years," Smith said.