Google Attack Is Tip Of Iceberg by George Kurtz

Corporations around the world face millions of cyberattacks a day. Most of these attacks don’t gain any media attention or lead to strong political statements by victims. This changed on Tuesday.

Google on Tuesday afternoon said it had discovered “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on its corporate infrastructure. The company said the attacks originated from China and that it would “review the feasibility” of its business operations in China following the incident. According to Google, at least 20 other companies in various sectors had been targeted by the attacks.

McAfee is actively working with companies involved in this incident. Targeted attacks happen all the time, but this is the highest profile attack of its kind that we have seen in recent memory. In these types of attacks the goal is typically to gain access to high value intellectual property such as company secrets. In the case of Google that would most likely be source code.

These attacks are called “targeted” attacks because the intruders typically gain access to an organization by sending a tailored attack to one or a few targeted individuals in an organization. Often these attacks will look like they come from a trusted source, leading the target to fall for the trap and exposing their credentials or installing malicious software on a system, giving the attackers a way in.

Intellectual property loss is a big deal. Businesses lose more than $1 trillion in intellectual property due to data theft and cybercrime annually on a global basis, according to the McAfee Unsecured Economies Report released a year ago. Information has become the currency in today’s economy and as such needs to be properly secured.

Data thieves have varying backgrounds, they can be individuals, business rivals or governments. Back in 2007 we highlighted cyberespionage as a trend in our Virtual Criminology Report. Since then the use of cyber has increased and last November we talked about the age of cyberwar with countries arming themselves for cyberwarfare.

We will continue to investigate the attack reported by Google. I hope the attention paid to the most recent attacks will lead to organizations re-examining their cybersecurity strategies and realizing that a solid defense in-depth strategy is needed for adequate protection in today’s age of highly sophisticated cyberattacks.

George

Tags: Cybercrime, data breach, kurtz, security

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