Posted 08.03.2011 at 11:52 am
16 Comments
Hacked: Someone's Been Cyber Snooping on the UN
Javier Carbajal via Wikimedia
The biggest hack ever discovered has been exposed by McAfee, and the breadth and depth would be impressive it wasn’t so disconcerting: five years, at least 72 different governments, NGOs, and other organizations (including the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee) and reams and reams of secret data. Of course, McAfee believes there is a single “state actor” behind the attacks, but the company has declined to name it. Care to venture a guess?
The hacks are tied together into a single ongoing event by the fact that they were discovered via the log contents of a central “command and control” server being examined by McAfee investigators beginning in 2009. McAfee investigators dubbed the attack “Operation Shady RAT,” with RAT short for “remote access tool,” the common umbrella term for the software hackers and security types use to access networks from afar.
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Technology, Clay Dillow, computers, cyber defense, cyber security, hackers, McAfee, security, united nationsThe long list of victims in the five-year campaign include the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the International Olympic Committee (IOC); the World Anti-Doping Agency; and an array of companies, from defense contractors to high-tech enterprises.
And China, right? Surely if someone was going to hack big targets in the U.S. and Europe, the IOC, the UN, and every major economic player in Asia/Indochina, that person surely wouldn’t overlook China, the biggest player of them all, right? No? That’s interesting.
I’m not the only one who thinks so. Cyber experts not affiliated with McAfee say everything points to the Chinese--the keen interest in Taiwan, the hacking of the IOC prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the defense contractors and high-tech companies whose trade secrets could be exploited. All of this information might be interesting to anyone. But it would be especially interesting to China.
China has not issued an official comment on the hack-a-thon. But if they had, we can assume it would be something along the lines of: “Who, me?”
[Reuters]
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*cough* China
Who's got their hands in the cookie jar?
Who Me?
Yes You!
Not me!
Couldn't Be!
LOL Busted.
Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978
"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC
Given the recent spate of hacking from Chinese entities, it would certainly not be surprising if they were caught at it again. Nevertheless, jumping to conclusions in this case should be avoided; Hacking is a sophisticated art, and if a government is intelligent enough to pull off such a high-profile heist of data, they should also be suspected of being able to plant Black Flags. IE, if the United States were behind such hacking efforts, it would be wise enough to both hack into its own databases and avoid hacking (or at least get caught hacking) the entity it wants the international community to implicate, namely China; the overall goal being not the acquisition of data, but to turn global opinion against China.
For the record, I do believe China to be behind this hack, but all scenarios should be considered and investigated by the international authorities.
@Kokopure
I was about to say the same thing. I am not saying its not China by any means, but I refuse to be one of the people who just jump to conclusions. Everyone who travels this site must have some form of scientific method in the brains, and this should be applied to this as well. I think this is really cool though all in all. Who ever it is really stuck it to the man, so to speak. I personally like that idea of it. Now, if the case is the Man is the one sticking it to the Man...then that is were it gets sorta weird.
@Kokopure, agreed, any good hacker, surely one capable of this high level of intrusion would be able to spoof a patsy. However, with the number of infected products coming from chinese manufacturers (ie usb drives etc), it's hard to not to point the finger.
Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978
"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC
personally, I think if it isn't China, it's McAfee. who better to pull off such a crime, and who better to blame it on, than China?
why learn from your own mistakes, when you could learn from the mistakes of others?
Maybe the Chinese just aren't worth hacking
This is terrible but then again we allowed it to happen.
ASIANS RULE!!!!!
One of these days, China will hack the wrong mainframe, and somebody will take the cyber-war to a real war.
I only hope it's not the US. *facepalm*
I suggest as they get wind of being hack, in reality tell no one of this. They quietly fill of your data base with junk and stupid emails and false documents. Maybe let them steal a virus or 2 or 3 and crash their system in return. A sting can be a wonderful thing, hmmm. Stick you hand in the cookie jar and you may find you hand getting a good smack!
Meh, China wants to abuse their connection to the rest of the world. They don't deserve to have said connection it seems and would be better off if forcibly disconnected.
lmao. Has no one here read Art of War? China is such a conveniently nice juicy decoy; playing the West's bandwagon of fear. And the plebeians love it.
I imagine that Operation Shady Rat really stands for
OSRAT or operating system remote access tool.