Computer security firm McAfee says it has uncovered a massive hacking spree — seemingly unrelated to News Corp. — that amounts to “the biggest transfer of wealth in terms of intellectual property in history” at the hands of a “state actor”, which hacked 72 organizations beginning in mid-2006, among them the United States government, the United Nations, and the International Olympic Committee. “Companies and government agencies are getting raped and pillaged every day,” McAfee said. “They are losing economic advantage and national secrets to unscrupulous competitors.”
Though McAfee didn’t identify a perpetrator, Reuters reports that the hacks could have been carried out by China because they had the most to gain, for instance, snooping around their competitors before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. “Everything points to China. It could be the Russians, but there is more that points to China than Russia,” a security expert told Reuters.
McAfee, recently purchased by Intel, just happens to sell anti-hacking software services to governments and corporations, so the scare-factor should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Without an ounce of hyperbole, report author Dmitri Alperovitc states: “I am convinced that every company in every conceivable industry with significant size and valuable intellectual property and trade secrets has been compromised (or will be shortly), with the great majority of the victims rarely discovering the intrusion or its impact.” Resistance is futile — unless you send McAfee a blank check immediately.
State actor seen behind “enormous” wave of cyber attacks [Reuters]
