Dozens of prominent technology, defense and financial companies — including Google and Adobe — were successfully hit by hackers looking to steal source code and intellectual property using a cyber attack of never-before-seen sophistication.
As reported on Wired Magazine’s Threat Level blog,
[The hackers]…used unprecedented tactics that combined encryption, stealth programming and an unknown hole in Internet Explorer… . “We have never ever, outside of the defense industry, seen commercial industrial companies come under that level of sophisticated attack,” says Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research for McAfee. “It’s totally changing the threat model.” The attackers used nearly a dozen pieces of malware and several levels of encryption to burrow deeply into the bowels of company networks and obscure their activity… . “The encryption was highly successful in obfuscating the attack and avoiding common detection methods… .” “We haven’t seen encryption at this level. It was highly sophisticated.”
The attacks were initiated through malicious website visited by company employees. And according to Google, the hackers — in addition to stealing corporate intellectual property — were looking for access to human rights activists’ Gmail accounts. It is believed that the cyberattack originated in China.
Law enforcement agencies are still actively investigating the incident and there is a possibility of U.S. government intervention.
Tags: cybersecurity, google, hack
Most countries in the third world never respects intellectual property rights. piracy is so rampant in asian countries.’-’
intellectual property is not really respected in most countries in asia where piracy is so rampant.;-’