It has been alleged that Chinese hackers gained access to the US
Chamber of Commerce’s entire collection of online data last year,
according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
Sources close
to the organisation claim that the attack on the chamber, which is
America’s leading business lobbying group, saw the infiltraters gain
access to all of the data within its servers. While it is not known
exactly what data was access, the break in exposed a range of data from
its 3 million members, with emails and other data thought to have been
stolen.
The operation, which was coordinated from more than 300
separate Internet addresses, was shut down without a public announcement
upon being discovered in May 2010. Details of the incident have only
emerged after anonymous sources contacted the WSJ.
Reports of
cyber attacks have become common this year, with a great many assaults
suspected to have come from China, a great number of which are thought
to be related to business. Earlier this year the head of Britain’s
Ministry of Defence’s cyber security programme told the Daily Telegraph
that “the biggest threat to [the] country by cyber is not military, it
is economic”.
US firms remain a significant hacking target, as a
report from security firm Symantec recently revealed. The company
published details of Nitro, a campaign waged by Chinese cyber spies, who
targeted 48 US based companies, and a series of other firms from the UK
and Asia, during a six month campaign earlier this year.
Speculation
over China’s cyber threat has seen Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE come
under pressure in the US. The government has begun an investigation to
assess any possible threat that both companies’ increasing business, and
access to data, may pose to national security.
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