Chinese Company and Employee Deny Any Involvement in Hacking Attacks SHANGHAI - Tencent, a Chinese Internet company, denied on Friday that one of its employees had been involved in a recent breach of computers belonging to Japanese and Indian companies, as well as Tibetan activists. The company and the employee suggested that his identity might have been confused with someone else's. The company released a statement soon after Trend Micro, a computer security company with headquarters in Tokyo, released a report on Friday describing the breach. It was the result of a nearly yearlong effort to hack into computers and steal information from hundreds of companies and individuals in several countries, the report said. The report never identified a hacker by name. But it linked the attacks to an alias used by a graduate of Sichuan University in western China who wrote several articles on computer hacking and defense. The researchers found the alias through its connection to an e-mail address and a QQ number, the Chinese equivalent of an instant messaging screen name. The New York Times identified the owner of the alias as Gu Kaiyuan, based on online records of his writing. Mr. Gu is now an employee at Tencent, which offers social networking, instant messaging, online gaming and other online features. On Thursday, when asked about the attacks, Mr. Gu said, "I have nothing to say." On Friday, however, he denied involvement. In a message posted on Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media service, Mr. Gu said: "The QQ number associated with the hacker-controlled server belongs to my classmate, not me. I have not participated in any hacking. Sichuan University also issued a written statement late Friday by e-mail, saying it had never "hired any unit or individual to participate in Internet attacks or hacking activities." The report does not say precisely how many hackers were involved, but it suggests that the main attacker used the alias "scuhkr," which may stand for Sichuan University hacker, a researcher said. Mr. Gu, the Tencent employee, has used the alias "scuhkr," and he agreed on Friday that a QQ number mentioned in the report belonged to him. In several articles he wrote, he used both his real name and the alias "scuhkr." But he and a Tencent executive said on Friday that the report also included a second QQ number that did not belong to Mr. Gu and that was more likely related to the attacks. "We have checked with our colleague Mr. Gu Kaiyuan, who denied he was involved in any hacking activities," Tencent said in its statement. Nor was he named by the author of the report as a hacker. In an interview on Friday, Nart Villeneuve, a researcher who helped lead Trend Micro's effort, said there appeared to be one hacker using multiple QQ numbers and aliases. "That's what it seemed like to me based on the posts I saw online," he said. "We saw two aliases, "dang0102" and "scuhrk," make separate posts that contained the same QQ number that was used to register a command and control server." But he did not rule out more than one hacker. Sichuan University also suggested that two people were associated with the QQ numbers in the report. In a statement, it said: "Sichuan University had two students who used the nicknames of "dang0102" and "scuhkr," " - which were both mentioned in the Trend Micro report. But they never participated in malicious Internet attacks or hacking activities while at school and have graduated and left the university several years ago. According to the Micro Trends report, the hacker used a variety of types of malware, including some tied to an earlier cyberespionage campaign. The attacks breached 233 computers, according to the report. They aimed at Japanese companies, an Indian military research organization and activists and nongovernmental organizations related to Tibet, among others, the report said. The researchers did not suggest the attacks had been the work of government-employed hackers, but security experts said the methods and victims suggested a state-backed campaign. Chinese officials did not respond to the release of the report on Friday.