The Shandong Lanxiang Vocational School (), colloquially Lanxiang (), is a vocational school in the

Tianqiao District Tianqiao District () is one of 10 urban districts of the prefecture-level city of Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province in East China, forming part of the city's urban core. It has an area of and has 688,415 permanent residents . It borders Ji ...

Jinan Jinan (), Postal Map Romanization, alternately romanization of Chinese, romanized as Tsinan, is the Capital (political), capital of Shandong province in East China, Eastern China. With a population of 9.2 million, it is the second-largest city i ...

Shandong Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizati ...

, China. The school was founded in 1984 and is said to have been established with support from the

People's Liberation Army The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the principal military force of the People's Republic of China and the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The PLA consists of five service branches: the Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, ...

. The school admits about 20,000 students per year and offers courses in subjects like cooking, auto repair, construction equipment operations (specialized in excavator), hairdressing, as well as computer skills (albeit possibly only basic ones). Lanxiang North

Cyber attacks

The school has been suspected as a site from which

cyber attack A cyberattack is any offensive maneuver that targets computer information systems, computer networks, infrastructures, or personal computer devices. An attacker is a person or process that attempts to access data, functions, or other restricted ...

s were launched in 2009 (

Operation Aurora Operation Aurora was a series of cyber attacks conducted by advanced persistent threats such as the Elderwood Group based in Beijing, China, with ties to the People's Liberation Army. First publicly disclosed by Google on January 12, 2010, in a ...

) and in 2011; school officials have denied that their school launched the attacks. The school also hosts the command and control server for malware embedded in handled scanners built by a company physically located near the school. According to the website Week in China, this school is known for its

computer training Computer literacy is defined as the knowledge and ability to use computers and related technology efficiently, with skill levels ranging from elementary use to computer programming and advanced problem solving. Computer literacy can also refer ...

programmes offered to Chinese students and is infamous abroad as a breeding ground for an army of hackers originating from China. The fact that the school was owned by the

until 2000 further fuelled speculation. However, ''Zhihu Daily'', a Chinese internet newspaper, reported that one its undercover journalists discovered that most of the students at this school were unmotivated farmers who would not be remotely capable of hacking US targets. It remains an open question whether this is an exercise in disinformation.

Cyber attacks

Address

References

External links