Chinese gov't punishes Alibaba for failing to report vulnerability

It is not the first time that the Chinese government has been behind sanctions against the Alibaba group. This time it is a harsh punishment for the company for not reporting a vulnerability known as Log4Shell in time.

A few days ago, a vulnerability serious enough to worry the entire internet was detected. In fact, this failure caused thousands of companies and other institutions.

Fortunately, this bug was patched very quickly, however, it had already started to wreak havoc on many computer systems.

The Alibaba company was the first to detect this vulnerability, it has a cloud computing division that offers cloud servers to many companies around the world. The company informed the main affected parties, the Apache Foundation.

This was the company in charge of patching the bug, since the bug was in Log4J, a repository owned by this organization.

Unfortunately, the Chinese government decided that Alibaba should be punished for failing to report this vulnerability to the government in the first place.

The punishment was related to the suspension of the public-private partnership that the government maintained with the company for a period of six months.

China controls with a heavy hand all the Big Tech in the country

This is not the first time the Chinese government has punished big tech companies for "breaking the law." In general terms, the company acted in the correct way, since the standard procedures in these cases indicate that those affected should be informed in principle.

However, in China a series of regulations related to the disclosure of vulnerabilities was approved a few months ago.

These regulations oblige all technology companies to disclose critical vulnerabilities first to government authorities.

According to the Chinese government, this is done to prevent cybercriminals from affecting the country's technological infrastructure.

However, this is also a matter of "national security" so China handles all of this with a heavy hand.

How does the suspension of this collaboration affect the company?

It is important to mention that this partnership between the Chinese government and Alibaba accounted for 10% of the company's revenue in the last quarter. This means that it is an important part for the growth of the company.

But this does not only translate into loss of business revenue. It should also be noted that Alibaba has suffered a 5% drop in its share price. Without a doubt, this news was something that alarmed investors and negatively affected the finances of the company.

Fortunately, Alibaba is a money-moving company with a strong economy. This means that sooner rather than later you will be able to recover from this setback.

The Chinese government has sent a very clear message to all companies in the country; Whoever breaks the established norms is going to receive a punishment regardless of whether it is a small company or a giant corporation.