Massive Cyber-Spying Operation was revealed by McAffee recently. Dubbed “Operation Shady Rat” , the effort took data from groups ranging from the United Nations to media organizations, the government of Taiwan and the International Olympic Committee, the study says. The targeting of the IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency, which were targeted around the 2008 […]
Massive Cyber-Spying Operation was revealed by McAffee recently.
A map from the McAfee report showing locations of hacking victims.
Dubbed “Operation Shady Rat” , the effort took data from groups ranging from the United Nations to media organizations, the government of Taiwan and the International Olympic Committee, the study says.
The targeting of the IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency, which were targeted around the 2008 Olympics – “potentially pointed a finger at a state actor behind the intrusions, because there is likely no commercial benefit to be earned from such hacks,” Alperovitch wrote. And it doesn’t take too much reading between the lines to conclude which nation he’s talking about. Vanity Fair, in its scoop on the report, quotes other security experts as saying the signs point to China.
So how does all of this fit in with recent attacks from Anonymous and Lulzsec? “These types of exploitations have occurred relentlessly for at least a half decade, and the majority of the recent disclosures in the last six months have, in fact, been a result of relatively unsophisticated and opportunistic exploitations for the sake of notoriety by loosely organized political hacktivist groups such as Anonymous and Lulzsec
See a rundown of the hacking victims.
