U.S. investigators have been hard at work tracing the Google attack that we learned about early this year and they’ve narrowed it down pretty tightly. The attack, which affected not only Google but over 30 other companies, has been traced back to an Asian group using Chinese computer systems. Intelligence and law enforcement officials recognize patterns within the attack that suggest the group is connected to past attacks in addition to this most recent one. The group in question has a history of targeting corporations and stealing information.

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Remember that headline-capturing cyberattack that iced relations between Google and China? We haven’t heard too much about it lately, but perhaps that’s because it’s likely to fall under the purview of the National Security Agency. Google asked for the NSA’s help in assessing the attack and bolstering its security for the future. According to the Washington Post, the deal is still being finalized.

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It already seemed like a pretty reliable conclusion that China was behind the cyberattack that affected Google and multitude of other companies, but in case there were any reservations, a computer analyst has new evidence that points one more finger at the country.

According to a NY Times report, Joe Stewart, a malware specialist with SecureWorks, has traced the malware used in the attack back to China. The main program used in the attack was found to be based on an algorithm published in a Chinese technical paper. After investigating further, Stewart found that essentially every mention of the algorithm was on a website written in Chinese.

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Researchers at VeriSign’s iDefense security lab have been busy tracing the source of the large-scale cyberattack detailed earlier this week by Google. The team has successfully found the origin of the attack and has confirmed that it was indeed initiated by the Chinese government. IDefense’s report states that the attack was deployed via PDF files that capitalized on vulnerabilities in Adobe software, though Adobe has disputed the claim.

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