BEIJING: Chinese educational institutions named in connection with cyber-attacks on Google have denied involvement, state media said yesterday, as differences festered between Beijing and the Internet giant.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that the cyber-attacks aimed at Google and dozens of

other firms had been

traced to Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, which

the newspaper said had

military backing. The

paper cited anonymous sources for the report.

Google vowed in

January to stop bowing to Internet censors in China in the wake of sophisticated cyber-attacks aimed at the US firm’s source code and at Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists around the world.

A spokesperson for Shanghai Jiaotong University told Xinhua news agency: “We were shocked and indignant to hear these baseless allegations, which may harm the university’s reputation.”

“The report of the

New York Times was based simply on an IP (Internet Protocol) address. Given the highly developed network technology today, such a report is neither objective or balanced.” Li Zixiang, the party chief at the Lanxiang Vocational School in Shandong Province, who is also named in the report, said: “Investigation... found no trace the attacks originated from our school.”