Almost every organisation is being targeted by sophisticated malware attacks, McAfee study reveals - 8/3/2011 - Computer Weekly
Almost every organisation is being targeted by sophisticated cyber attacks, a comprehensive study of a malware command and control centre has revealed.
Researchers at security firm McAfee studied the logs of a targeted operation by a single nation state actor over a period of five years.
The operation targeted more than 70 global companies, governments and non-profit organisations in 14 countries, including the UK, making up more than 30 organisation types.
Researchers were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organisations, said Dmitri Alperovitch, vice-president of threat research at McAfee.
“Virtually everyone is falling prey to these intrusions, regardless of whether they are the United Nations, a multinational Fortune 100 company, a small non-profit think-tank, a national Olympic team, or even an unfortunate computer security firm,” he said.
According to Alperovitch, no organisation can ignore the threat of sophisticated intrusions reported at big companies such as Google, Lockheed Martin and RSA Security.
A portion of the defense budget should be re-directed to the growing threat of cyberattacks. I know that there are resources being dedicated to this. Nonetheless, the threat needs to be taken as seriously as any threat to national security and the health and well-being of citizens. The nation power grid, airline and other transportation, communications - all can be attacked, at great cost to lives and treasure, without a single soldier or bomb crossing our borders.
And this from today’s Financial Times:
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McAfee did not name most of the targets but said they included six US government agencies and 13 defence contractors. It said some classified military secrets had been stolen and that logs showed that the UN, the International Olympic Committee, Olympic committees of several countries and a large US-based news organisation were among the victims
