State-sponsored 5-year global cyberattack uncovered

According to analysis by McAfee, an intelligence agency has participated in a five-year operation targeting more than 70 global companies, governments and non-profit organisations. The cyber-snooping campaign – called Operation Shady RAT – began in mid-2006 with a series of attacks that affected some organisations including the US federal government, satellite communications companies, the Canadian government, the Vietnamese government, the Taiwanese government, the UN and more.

"The interest in the information held at the Asian and Western national Olympic Committees, as well as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency in the lead-up and immediate follow-up to the 2008 Olympics was particularly intriguing and potentially pointed a finger at a state actor behind the intrusions, because there is likely no commercial benefit to be earned from such hacks," writes Mitri Alperovitch, McAfee's VP of threat research.

The information about the campaign is based on the analysis of one specific command & control server used as part of the attack, which takes advantage of targeted phishing, poor patching practices and malware, as Alperovitch explains.

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