https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
>Former government officials with knowledge of the breach said attackers successfully accessed a database that flagged Gmail accounts marked for court-ordered wiretaps.
To me it sounds like Gmail was compromised, and during the compromise, the attackers identified a database containing information that was of great intelligence value to them. This database does not appear to have been the vector that allowed the attackers to get in, nor was it a "backdoor". I suspect the attackers also had access to many, many other databases.
It's certainly possible the primary intended goal of the breach was to access this information (for counter-intelligence purposes), but it's not how they actually got in, nor did it help them get in.
I think you'll find that on the whole I am right. That the system was there for US intelligence and the Chinese were there for counter-espionage and that the backdoor allowed the Chinese used the system to access email information that they would have had to compromise a different way to get - thus their getting access through a back door.
You have a point, but I don't think it applies in this situation. Google was a valuable target for Chinese intelligence for a whole variety of reasons. Google itself suspected that the primary motivation was to gather information on Chinese activists that were using the service.[1] The fact that there was apparently a database of FBI targets is just added benefit for them, and there's no evidence that I've seen to indicate that they knew of the database to begin with.
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/china-google-cyberat...
