Lawyers suing China for 2.2 billion US dollars

Lawyers suing China for 2.2 billion US dollars in an Internet-censoring software piracy case said they came under cyberattack this week.

Attorneys at the California law firm of Gipson Hoffman & Pancione said that on Monday they began receiving "Trojan emails" crafted to trick them into opening files booby-trapped with malicious software code.

"Trojan emails are specially constructed to retrieve data from the target's computer and often allow the sender to gain access to the target's computer or to the company's servers," the firm said in a release.

"It has not yet been determined whether any of the attempts were successful."

The law firm last week filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cybersitter accusing China of using the California company's copyrighted software censorship programs being mandated for computers sold in that country.