Google learned some hard security lessons after it was attacked late last year by hackers, CEO Eric Schmidt said Monday.

“Google is now particularly paranoid about that,” Schmidt said during a question-and-answer session following Googles Atmosphere 2010 conference before about 400 CIOs. After the company learned that some of its intellectual property was stolen during an attack that originated from inside China, it began locking down its systems to a greater degree and accelerated plans to move to Web-based systems like Chrome OS netbooks.

The attacks took advantage of a flaw in Internet Explorer 6 that was quickly patched, although the damage had been done. More than 30 U.S. companies were believed to be targeted by the attacks, but Google was one of the few that publicly identified itself as a victim because “we decided we had to tell people as a warning,” Schmidt said.

via Google CEO: Were now paranoid about security | Relevant Results – CNET News.

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