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Chinese Hackers Have Been Attacking The New York Times For Months - Yahoo! India Finance
For the past four months the New York Times has
been under attack by Chinese hackers, the newspaper says. The hackers were able to "infiltrate its computer
systems" and get passwords from reporters and
other employees. The Times says it hired an
outside firm to study the hacks and block them
for good. It also says that no customer
information was leaked by these attacks. The Times thinks the motivation was an
investigation into the relatives of China's prime
minister, Wen Jiabao, and how their business
dealings turned them into billionaires. The hackers were tricky about hiding their
tracks. They used a technique called
"spearphishing" where they sent emails laced
with malicious links. Once opened, malware was
secretly downloaded onto the recipients
computers. The email was routed through U.S. universities to disguise their origin. These were
the same U.S. universities used to disguise
Chinese hacker attacks on the U.S. military, the
Times says. Chinese officials deny that the government or
military were involved in the attacks. These type of super targeted attacks, where
hackers work to break into a specific company,
are particularly hard to defend against. The
industry calls them "advanced persistent threats."
But there are some U.S. security startups with
technology that can thwart them including FireEye, which earlier this month landed a $50 million round of financing and a big name new
CEO, Dave DeWalt.
For the past four months the New York Times has
been under attack by Chinese hackers, the newspaper says. The hackers were able to "infiltrate its computer
systems" and get passwords from reporters and
other employees. The Times says it hired an
outside firm to study the hacks and block them
for good. It also says that no customer
information was leaked by these attacks. The Times thinks the motivation was an
investigation into the relatives of China's prime
minister, Wen Jiabao, and how their business
dealings turned them into billionaires. The hackers were tricky about hiding their
tracks. They used a technique called
"spearphishing" where they sent emails laced
with malicious links. Once opened, malware was
secretly downloaded onto the recipients
computers. The email was routed through U.S. universities to disguise their origin. These were
the same U.S. universities used to disguise
Chinese hacker attacks on the U.S. military, the
Times says. Chinese officials deny that the government or
military were involved in the attacks. These type of super targeted attacks, where
hackers work to break into a specific company,
are particularly hard to defend against. The
industry calls them "advanced persistent threats."
But there are some U.S. security startups with
technology that can thwart them including FireEye, which earlier this month landed a $50 million round of financing and a big name new
CEO, Dave DeWalt.
