BEIJING - The reality - and my fears ? dawned only slowly.

For weeks, friends and colleagues complained I had not answered their e-mail messages. I swore I had not received them.

My e-mail program began crashing almost daily. But only when all my contacts disappeared for the second time did suspicion push me to act.

I dug deep inside my Yahoo settings, and I shuddered. Incoming messages had been forwarding to an unfamiliar e-mail address, one presumably typed in by intruders who had gained access to my account.

I’d been hacked.

That phrase has been popping up a lot lately on Web chats and at dinner parties in China, where scores of foreign reporters have discovered intrusions into their e-mail accounts.

But unlike malware that trawls for bank account passwords or phishing gambits that peddle lonely and sexually adventurous Russian women, these cyberattacks appear inspired by good old-fashioned espionage.

Recent probes by cyber-countersleuths at the University of Toronto have unmasked electronic spy rings that have been pilfering documents and correspondence from computers in 100 countries. A few patterns have been noted: many of the attacks originated on computers located in China and the spymasters seemed to have a fondness for the Indian Defense Ministry, Tibetan human rights advocates, the Dalai Lama and foreign journalists who cover China and Taiwan.

Although the authors of the reports were careful not to blame the Chinese, a subtext in their findings was not hard to discern: Someone in China has been engaged in high-tech surveillance and thievery against perceived enemies of the state.

If that is indeed happening, it would represent a new chapter in the long history of Chinese attempts to manage the foreign journalists who live and work here, who now number more than 400.

Perhaps most disturbing would be the anonymity of the attacks.

Nart Villeneuve, a Canadian researcher who helped analyze the attacks, including an infectious e-mail message designed to dupe the assistants of foreign reporters in Beijing, cautioned there was not enough hard evidence to blame the Chinese, or at least the Chinese government.

“The attackers tend to mask their location,” said Mr. Villeneuve, who is the chief researcher at SecDev.cyber, an Internet security company. “On the other hand, you have to wonder who has the time and interest to produce these kinds of targeted attacks.”

Those of us who live and work in China might be forgiven for suspicions that focus on our hosts, or at least on the legion of so-called patriotic hackers who take umbrage at our coverage and use their computer skills accordingly.

To be clear, the lot of the foreign journalist has greatly improved in recent years. But there is an undeniably contentious edge to our relationship with China, one rooted in history and a stubborn conviction held by many Chinese that reporters here are spies with an ability to turn a phrase. Even if we have scant evidence, most foreign journalists have come to assume our phone conversations are monitored. We have learned to remove our cellphone SIM cards when meeting dissidents. At the office, we often reflexively lower our voices when discussing “politically sensitive” topics.

Even now, Western news organizations complain when their employees are called in for tea-drinking sessions with security personnel who ask about the stories they are working on.

Most journalists working in China today would agree that outward signs of surveillance have decreased markedly. Some, however, say that the monitoring has become more sophisticated and subtle, which brings us back to the recent rash of hacking.

Because Yahoo will not discuss the nature of the incidents, it is unclear exactly what happened. The company informed some victims that their accounts had been breached, but declined to be more specific. Were their e-mail messages read? Were their sources endangered? They do not know.

Even if poorly understood, the intrusions have left many reporters, including myself, feeling unnerved. One reporter, a friend with many years of experience in China, said she felt violated and angry after learning her e-mail account was compromised. Even more frustrating, she said, was not knowing whom to blame.

“I worry about Chinese friends who may have written things they could come to regret,” she said, asking that her name and affiliation not be printed for fear of drawing the attention of freelance hackers. “I’d be more relieved if they had just stolen my credit card information.”


ANDREW JACOBS


THE NEW YORK TIMES