An unlikely cyberwar broke out yesterday when Iranian hackers attacked China’s leading search engine and Chinese counterparts retaliated against Iranian websites.

In the morning, people accessing the web page of Baidu, China’s largest internet search engine, found it was covered with a picture of the Iranian flag and other symbols and the words “Iranian Cyber Army”.

Not long after, a rallying cry for retaliation emerged in Chinese online discussion groups, blogs and bulletin boards.

In the afternoon, participants and cybersecurity experts started reporting that Chinese flags and nationalist slogans had appeared on websites registered in Iran.

On another website registered in Iran, Chinese hackers displayed a message saying: “Please tell your so-called Iranian Cyber Army: Don’t intrusion chinese website about The United States authorities to intervene the internal affairs of Iran’s response. This is a warning!”

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