McAfee: China has been carrying out major hacking attack for five years

China has been hacking governments and companies in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany for five years now. At least that’s what a McAfee security researcher claims. The hacks are said to take place via phishing.

The hacks are carried out because employees of governments, non-profit organizations and companies receive an email with a link. If the user clicks on that link, malware with a backdoor will be installed, say McAfee. Via the account of the person who clicked on the link, it is then possible to poke around in systems. The information obtained can be forwarded. In some cases, the attackers were able to gather information for more than two years.

The victims were mainly governments, companies that work for governments and organizations related to the Olympic Games. McAfee only reports successful attacks, it is unclear where the attack was repelled. The security company discovered the attack through its software, which first noticed suspicious things in 2009.

McAfee thinks China is behind the attack, as attacks have been carried out in almost all countries in Southeast Asia, while China has remained unaffected, it says. read at Vanity Fair. In addition, several ‘Olympic’ attacks were carried out around 2008, the year in which the Games were held in Beijing. In addition, the companies, institutions and governments that have been attacked have information that the Chinese state wanted. The security company calls the hacking attack Operation Shady RAT. RAT in this case stands for remote access tool, the genre under which the malware falls. McAfee summarized its findings in a white paper.

The attack was concentrated in the United States, but some successful attacks have also been carried out in Europe. In 2008, for example, the attackers were able to snoop around the systems of a Danish satellite communications company for six months. From 2008 to 2010, they had access to UN systems in Switzerland. Then, in 2009, internal information was gained from a company that does business for the British Army and from a German accounting firm.

Many of the organizations involved deny having been hacked, which McAfee attributes to a reluctance to admit it. McAfee calls for more cybersecurity, in which it has an interest as a maker of the necessary software. Outside of McAfee’s claims, there is still little supporting evidence for the major hacking attack.