Intel also targeted in January cyberattack, but says it was unrelated to Google hack

It seems Intel, too, was the target of repeated cyberattacks throughout the month of January.

The tech firm noted in its most recent filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it was victim to multiple "attempts by others to gain unauthorized access through the Internet to our information technology systems by, for example, masquerading as authorized users or surreptitious introduction of software."

Intel officials ultimately reported they were unsure of who launched the attacks, though they did speculate the attempts could be the result of "industrial or other espionage, or actions by hackers seeking to harm the company..."

But they have since taken great care to distance their difficulties with those of Google, which was subject to a series of cyberattacks around the same time as Intel.

Google believes two Chinese schools, one of which has close ties to the state's military, launched an attack on the search engine giant on January 12, specifically targeting human rights activists using the company's popular Gmail service.

But an Intel spokesman stressed that incident was in no way related to his company's current difficulties.

“The only connection between what we saw in January and the attacks on Google is timing,” Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman, told The New York Times, which first discovered the SEC report.

Intel's full explanation, pulled from their SEC filing, follows the jump.

We regularly face attempts by others to gain unauthorized access through the Internet to our information technology systems by, for example, masquerading as authorized users or surreptitious introduction of software. These attempts, which might be the result of industrial or other espionage, or actions by hackers seeking to harm the company, its products, or end users, are sometimes successful. One recent and sophisticated incident occurred in January 2010 around the same time as the recently publicized security incident reported by Google. We seek to detect and investigate these security incidents and to prevent their recurrence, but in some cases we might be unaware of an incident or its magnitude and effects. The theft and/or unauthorized use or publication of our trade secrets and other confidential business information as a result of such an incident could adversely affect our competitive position and reduce marketplace acceptance of our products; the value of our investment in R&D, product development, and marketing could be reduced; and third parties might assert against us or our customers claims related to resulting losses of confidential or proprietary information or end-user data and/or system reliability. Our business could be subject to significant disruption, and we could suffer monetary and other losses, including the cost of product recalls and returns and reputational harm, in the event of such incidents and claims.

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