While US security experts claim that the attack on Google came from two Chinese schools, one of the schools at the centre of the row has denied it.

The state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Zixiang from the Lanxiang Vocational School in Shandong province said "investigations . . . found no trace the attacks originated from our school."

The New York Times last week insisted that the security trails led to Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School. The schools were created with military backing and a Ukrainian teacher trains some of its computer scientists, the Times claimed. However according to the Calgary Herald the school denied any relationship with the military and said there were no Ukrainians working at the school.

Li said the school had never hired any foreign staff. The school teaches vocational skills such as cooking, auto repair and hairdressing, Xinhua reported. But the computer science class offers only basic courses like how to hold a mouse the right way up.

More than 38 students had been recruited by the military since 2006 "for their talent in auto repair, cooking and electric welding." It looks like if the security trail ended at that particular school, Google's security was bought to its knees by a hairdresser.