Operation Shady RAT : Biggest-ever series of cyber attacks uncovered, U.N. hit

[Jack]

Security experts have discovered the biggest series of cyber attacks to date, involving the infiltration of the networks of 72 organizations including the United Nations, governments and companies around the world.

Security company McAfee, which uncovered the intrusions, said it believed there was one "state actor" behind the attacks but declined to name it, though one security expert who has been briefed on the hacking said the evidence points to China.

The 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.

In the case of the United Nations, the hackers broke into the computer system of the UN Secretariat in Geneva in 2008, hid there unnoticed for nearly two years, and quietly combed through reams of secret data, according to McAfee.

More details - link

 

[Vextor]

RE: Biggest-ever series of cyber attacks uncovered, U.N. hit

That is big. I still don't get into my head how a person managed to infiltrate security at the UN and stay there, unnoticed for 2 years, and was only discovered by McAfee, one of the world's worst anti-virus programs. It doesn't make sense.

 

[Jack]

RE: Biggest-ever series of cyber attacks uncovered, U.N. hit

And now China is try to defend themselves...

China Suffered 500K Cyber Attacks Last Year​

The Chinese government claims they’ve seen nearly 500,000 cyber attacks designed to hit their computers over the past year, with the U.S. and India among the countries believed to be responsible.

A report issued Tuesday by the nation’s chief computer security monitoring network, the National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center of China, found most attacks involved the use of Trojan Horse programs. The report claims 14.7 percent of the attacks originating in the United States while 8 percent are attributed to India.

Read more

Related articles :

The Truth Behind the Shady RAT​

McAfee published an interesting report yesterday about what they called Operation Shady RAT, focusing on a series of what some may call “advanced persistent threat” attacks. The attacks were dubbed in some quarters as “one of the largest series of cyber attacks ever.” While quite a bit of data was presented regarding the potential scale of these attacks, details on the threats and how the attacks were staged were somewhat limited.

Based on the information we managed to glean from the report and our own intelligence sources, we have identified the initial attack vectors, the threats used and how the attack was staged. In addition to all this, we have also uncovered what appears to be the same information source about the victims of the attacks that was used by McAfee as the basis of their report. This information is freely available on the attackers’ command and control site, which is a strange oversight considering this type of attack is often described as “advanced” or “sophisticated.”

Read more

 

[illumination]

Lawmaker requests McAfee briefing to discuss Shady RAT

A California congresswoman has requested a meeting with McAfee's head researcher and his team following the security company's release last week of a 14-page report chronicling a persistent hacking campaign affecting some 50 U.S. organizations.
Read More

 

[Jack]

RE: Lawmaker requests McAfee briefing to discuss Shady RAT

The thruh is simple : Both US and China had hacking campaigns in which they've targeted each other.Not only their organizations or companies but also other critical infrastructure.The US is not a virgin and China has been caught in action...Why is this congresswoman calling McAfee? Only for PR reasons.
We live in the age on the technology , everyone is gearing up for a cyber war so we shouldn't be really surprised when we read something like this.
What makes this case special ? It was reported.

 

[illumination]

Kaspersky says McAfee report is all bark and no bite..

The CEO of Kaspersky Lab is the latest security expert to take a shot at McAfee's recently released "Shady RAT" report which uncovered a massive cyberespionage operation that the firm said has affected scores of companies over the past five years.
Read More

 

[illumination]

McAfee fires back at Shady RAT criticism

McAfee has fired back at critics of its report on Operation Shady RAT, and said the CEO of rival anti-virus maker Kaspersky Lab, who called the report "alarmist," missed the whole point of the expose.

Read More

 

[Deleted member 178]

you dont know yet but it is SKYNET conspiracy, by making China and USA cyber-fight each other, it can penetrate their system anonymously and install invisible seeds of itself; them fuse the giant calculators and computer with itself !!!! WE ARE DOOMED !!! am i the only one who saw it coming !!!! hey what is this noise on my computer?... oh i dont believe it !!! OH NOOOOOO !!!!! AAAAAAARRRGHHHH ....