Operation Shady Rat – Unprecedented Cyber-Espionage Campaign and Intellectual-Property Bonanza

For skilled hackers, computers of top corporations and governments are as easy to break into as a locked car. For at least five years, hackers had secret access to computer systems of the United Nations, ASEAN, national governments, multinational corporations, defense contractors, media, Olympic committees and other groups, as discovered by the cyber-security firm McAfee. Operation Shady Rat pilfered government files, emails, contracts, business plans and designs in 14 nations, reports Michael Joseph Gross of Vanity Fair, who interviewed Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at McAfee. The heist was sophisticated and extensive, suggesting a state sponsor. While Alperovitch refused to speculate, the list of victims and timing could point to hackers based in China. The breach is glaring, yet many of the victims insist that their computer systems were secure and could not have been hacked. Wary of shareholders and bad publicity, corporations prefer not to admit in public that anything has been stolen. – YaleGlobal