In a follow up to the developing story between China’s response to Google’s threats to leave that market, The New York Times reported today that many corporations are starting to voice their concerns about the amount of government-backed surveillance in China. Security researchers in Canada found that "an automated espionage system based in China was using targeted e-mail messages to compromise thousands of computers in hundreds of governmental organizations. In each case, after the computers were controlled by the attackers, they were able to scan for documents that were then stolen and transferred to a digital storage facility in China." The report by the Canadian researchers stopped short of accusing the Chinese government of master-minding the attacks, but suggested that the method of attacks are strangely suspicious. "One of the Canadian researchers said that fellow computer security researchers suspected that the attack on Google and other recent intrusions relied on hackers sending booby-trapped documents that were stored in Adobe’s Acrobat Reader format, which then infect victims’ computers." This only should escalate the need for more U.S. organization’s to address their cyber-security controls from a risk management perspective where oversight begins with at the board of directors level.
To read more about this article, please click here: In Rebuke of China, Focus Falls on Cybersecurity