The world's most extensive case of cyber-espionage, including attacks on U.S. government and U.N. computers, was revealed Wednesday by online security firm McAfee, and analysts are speculating that China is behind the attacks.
The spying was dubbed "Operation Shady RAT," or "remote access tool" by McAfee -- and it led to a massive loss of information that poses a huge economic threat, wrote vice president of threat research Dmitri Alperovitch
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Analysts told The Washington Post that the finger of blame for the infiltration of the 72 networks -- 49 of them in the U.S. -- points firmly in the direction of China.
California-based McAfee would only say it believed there was one "state actor" behind the attacks -- identified from logs tracked to a single server -- against a long list of victims, including the governments of the U.S., Taiwan, India, Canada and others; the International Olympic Committee; the U.N; and an array of high firms and defense contractors.
Alperovitch admitted he was shocked by the scope of the scam.
"Even we were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organizations and were taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators," he wrote in a 14-page report released on Wednesday.
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McAfee researchers discovered a “command and control” server in 2009 while investigating some attacks against defense contractors, Reuters reported. In March of this year, they returned to that computer and found logs revealing all of the attacks, the agency said.
Read it all here.
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