McAfee: hacking has produced an "historically unprecedented transfer of wealth"

[Richard]

Hi Andre and All,

>From this story and many others, dating back to 2005, it seems to me the, Internet is just not safe for any sort of serious data, and or critical systems.  I find it amazing that government and business use it for such.  Wouldn't it be much safer for government and business to get sensitive material off the Internet, and only use the Internet only for non-critical and non-sensitive purposes?

Best Wishes
Richard Demaret
KI4KXJ

--- On Wed, 8/3/11, Andre Kesteloot <andre.kesteloot at verizon.net>
 wrote:

From: Andre Kesteloot <andre.kesteloot at verizon.net>
Subject: McAfee: hacking has produced an "historically unprecedented transfer of wealth"
To: "tacos"
 <tacos at amrad.org>
Date: Wednesday, August 3, 2011, 8:52 AM


  

    
  
  
    IDG News Service -
      Security vendor McAfee published a detailed report on Tuesday
      about a hacking group that penetrated 72 companies and
      organizations in 14 countries since 2006 in a massive operation
      that stole national secrets, business plans and other sensitive
      information.
    McAfee said the attackers are likely a single group acting on
      behalf of a government, differing from the recent wave of less
      sophisticated attacks from cyber activist groups such as Anonymous
      and LulzSec, according
        to the report.
    McAfee did not say what country might have been working with the
      hackers, in contrast to companies such as Google,
      which as recently as last month blamed China for hacking into the
      Gmail accounts of several high-profile U.S. officials.
    The intrusions, which McAfee called Operation Shady RAT, was
      discovered after the security
      vendor gained access to a command-and-control server that
      collected data from the hacked computers and logged the
      intrusions.
    "After painstaking analysis of the logs, even we were surprised
      by the enormous diversity of the victim organizations and were
      taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators," wrote Dmitri
      Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at McAfee, and
      author of the report. 
    Alperovitch wrote that over the past five to six years there has
      been nothing short of a "historically unprecedented transfer
        of wealth" due to the hacking operation.
    The data stolen consists of everything from classified
      information on government networks, source code, e-mail archives,
      exploration details for new oil and gas field auctions, legal
      contracts, SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition)
      configurations, design schematics and more, Alperovitch said.
    McAfee declined to name most of the organizations attacked,
      referring to businesses such as "South Korean Steel Company,"
      "U.S. Defense Contractor #1" and "Taiwanese Electronics Company,"
      among others. 
    Those that were named include the International Olympic Committee
      (IOC), the World Anti-Doping Agency, the United Nations and the
      ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Secretariat. Those
      organizations, however, were not of economic interest to hackers,
      and "potentially pointed a finger at a state actor behind the
      intrusions," Alperovitch wrote.
    The hacking group gained access to computers by first sending
      targeted e-mails to individuals within the companies or
      organizations. The e-mails contained an exploit that, if executed,
      would cause the download of a piece of malicious software that
      communicates with the command-and-control server.
    In 2006, eight organizations were attacked, but by 2007 the
      number jumped to 29 organizations, according to the report. The
      number of victimized organizations increased to 36 in 2008 and
      peaked at 38 in 2009 before starting to fall, "likely due to the
      widespread availability of the countermeasures for the specific
      intrusion indicators used by this specific actor," Alperovitch
      wrote.
    The duration of the compromises ranged from less than a month to
      up to more than two years in the case of an attack on the Olympic
      committee of a unnamed nation in Asia.
    John Ribeiro covers outsourcing
        and general technology breaking news from India for The
      IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter
        at @Johnribeiro.
        John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro at idg.com
  


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