China has officially, adamantly denied that the government played any role in the recent hack attack against Google and dozens of other firms (with the objective of account info for human rights activists in China). However, another government may have played a part in the attack—the US.

From their first official statement on the matter, China has denied their involvement and condemned the attack. As Agence France-Presse reports, the government is also none too pleased with Google’s accusations:

The “accusation that the Chinese government participated in (any) cyberattack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China,” an unnamed spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told Xinhua.

“We are firmly opposed to that,” the spokesman said.

(LOL, when I first read that, I thought they were saying they were opposed to denigrating China, kind of a duh. But they mean they’re opposed to cyberattacks.)

The issue has continued to grow over the month, especially since US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s address on Internet freedom last week, where she urged China to investigate the attacks. China called the address harmful to the countries’ bilateral relations.

Google has not yet stopped censoring its search results. But CEO Eric Schmidt said, “in a reasonably short time from now we will be making some changes there” last Thursday.

Meanwhile, another government definitely played a role in the attack—the US government. No, they didn’t hack into Gmail accounts, but a US law allowed the hackers to get in.

According to Bruce Schneier, Google created a back door to Gmail to allow LEOs access in accordance with search warrants. The hackers took advantage of this back door to access Gmail themselves.

What do you think? Is China protesting too much—or is it possible that a low-level employee might have helped the hackers? Is the US more culpable for creating the weakness in the first place?