ktlight
4th August 2011, 07:43
FYI:
The UN has launched an investigation into a reported cyber attack targeting its offices in Geneva, after a security firm revealed that at least 72 organizations across the world have been breached.
A UN spokesman in New York, Martin Nesirky, said the investigation was launched immediately after the security firm McAfee reported the cyber attack.
"The UN started a fact-finding exercise to ascertain whether the alleged intrusion can be confirmed or not," dpa quoted Nesirky as saying on Wednesday. "To this end, the network logs from September 2008 onwards to December 2010 are being analysed. It is expected that the analysis will take several days to complete."
McAfee said in its report that computers of the organizations, located in 14 countries, have been targeted by a sophisticated cyber attack dubbed “Operation Shady RAT.”
"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," McAfee said.
Theft of data has appeared to be the attacker's main objective, AFP reported.
McAfee explained how an infected email had been sent to the employees of the organizations. After the emails had been opened, a malware were implanted into the computer creating a backdoor communication channel to the sender's control server.
The governments of the US, Canada, India, Taiwan, Vietnam and South Korea were part of the victims.
A number of other organizations such as the United Nations, the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the International Olympic Committee and a dozen US defense contractors were also victims.
The report added that the hacking into the computer systems of the defense contractors targeted “sensitive military technologies.”
Dmitri Alperovitch, the vice president for threat research at McAfee, described the hacking as a "five-year targeted operation by one specific actor.”
"We believe based on the targeting and the scale and the impact of these operations, and the fact that they didn't just have an economic gain in mind but also political and military, that this is clearly a nation-state but we're not pointing the finger at anyone," Alperovitch added.
source
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/192249.html
The UN has launched an investigation into a reported cyber attack targeting its offices in Geneva, after a security firm revealed that at least 72 organizations across the world have been breached.
A UN spokesman in New York, Martin Nesirky, said the investigation was launched immediately after the security firm McAfee reported the cyber attack.
"The UN started a fact-finding exercise to ascertain whether the alleged intrusion can be confirmed or not," dpa quoted Nesirky as saying on Wednesday. "To this end, the network logs from September 2008 onwards to December 2010 are being analysed. It is expected that the analysis will take several days to complete."
McAfee said in its report that computers of the organizations, located in 14 countries, have been targeted by a sophisticated cyber attack dubbed “Operation Shady RAT.”
"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," McAfee said.
Theft of data has appeared to be the attacker's main objective, AFP reported.
McAfee explained how an infected email had been sent to the employees of the organizations. After the emails had been opened, a malware were implanted into the computer creating a backdoor communication channel to the sender's control server.
The governments of the US, Canada, India, Taiwan, Vietnam and South Korea were part of the victims.
A number of other organizations such as the United Nations, the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the International Olympic Committee and a dozen US defense contractors were also victims.
The report added that the hacking into the computer systems of the defense contractors targeted “sensitive military technologies.”
Dmitri Alperovitch, the vice president for threat research at McAfee, described the hacking as a "five-year targeted operation by one specific actor.”
"We believe based on the targeting and the scale and the impact of these operations, and the fact that they didn't just have an economic gain in mind but also political and military, that this is clearly a nation-state but we're not pointing the finger at anyone," Alperovitch added.
source
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/192249.html