McAfee, an Internet security company, uncovered the largest series of cyber attacks to date, which infiltrated networks of 72 governments, companies and organizations around the world, including the United Nations.
According to McAfee, there was one “state actor” behind the five-year campaign, and one security expert suggested the evidence points to China.
Victims of the cyber attack include the governments of the United States, India, South Korea and Canada and companies such as defense contractors. In addition to organizations such as the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency, the United Nations was hacked in 2008. Hackers broke into the secretariat’s computer system and sifted through data for two years.
“Companies and government agencies are getting raped and pillaged every day,” Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee’s vice president of threat research, told Reuters. “They are losing economic advantage and national secrets to unscrupulous competitors. This is the biggest transfer of wealth in terms of intellectual property in history. The scale at which this is occurring is really, really frightening.”
Reuters reported that security experts are suggesting China could have been behind the attacks.
Jim Lewis, a cyber expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was very likely China was behind the campaign because some of the targets had information that would be of particular interest to Beijing.
The systems of the IOC and several national Olympic Committees were breached before the 2008 Beijing Games. And China views Taiwan as a renegade province, and political issues between them remain contentious even as economic ties have strengthened in recent years.
“Everything points to China. It could be the Russians, but there is more that points to China than Russia,” Lewis said.
Read more at Reuters.
