I'm not going to say much, except uh oh. This makes yesterday's news look so yesterday, a sunny walk in the park compared to this. Get ready for a bumpy ride people.
Operation Shady Rat (Remote Access Tool) struck at least six years ago and went unnoticed by the world.
Here's the headline:
Hackers breached the computer networks of 72 organizations around the world over a five-year period, in the biggest hacking campaign discovered to date, security firm McAfee said on Wednesday.
Here are some additional details:
The victims include:
- Governments of Canada, India, South Korea, Taiwan, United States and Vietnam.
- International bodies such as the United Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency.
- 12 U.S. defense contractors, 1 U.K. defense contractor.
- Companies in construction, steel, energy, solar power, technology, satellite communications, accounting and media.
Who did it?
McAfee's Alperovitch said he believes that a nation state was behind the attacks, but he declined to identify it. He said the attacker is the same country that was behind other security breaches that McAfee has previously investigated.
Jim Lewis, an expert in cyber attacks with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was briefed by McAfee. Lewis said the presence of Taiwan and the International Olympic Committee in the victims list suggest China is most likely the perpetrator of the attack.
How valuable is the data that was stolen?
"This is the biggest transfer of wealth in terms of intellectual property in history," Alperovitch said. "The scale at which this is occurring is really, really frightening."
"Companies and government agencies are getting raped and pillaged every day. They are losing economic advantage and national secrets to unscrupulous competitors," he said.
http://www.reuters.com/...
Here are more details from McAfee (get your magnifying glass out):
http://blogs.mcafee.com/...
Here's the pdf of the Mcafee piece (much easier to read) - h/t Just Bob
http://www.mcafee.com/...
Another good article:
http://www.vanityfair.com/...
There are gazillions more articles out there, but these were the ones most pertinent, to my mind. Just google Operation Shady Rat.
Do you like your toast with butter or jelly?
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