Saturday, February 12, 2011

Chinese Hackers Hit Five Major Energy Firms

The internet has proven to be not safe for anything. In China, a few hackers got into the systems of five multinational oil and gas companies. The hackers tried to steal bidding plans and also other critical information. The identity of the companies remains anonymous, and the reporters would not identify the companies. "It ... speaks to quite a sad state of our critical infrastructure security. These were not sophisticated attacks ... yet they were very successful in achieving their goals," said Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's vice president for threat research. Hackers can get into people’s computers real easy nowadays, these hackers used two methods, and one was the public internet while the other was through infected e-mails. Using these methods the hackers had almost four years of access to the company’s networks, in which they focused on financial documents related to “oil and gas field exploration and bidding contracts.” "That information is tremendously sensitive and would be worth a huge amount of money to competitors," said Alperovitch. The hack was traced back using the McAfee's software, in which it traced their IP address. Some people believe the Chinese government may be behind the hacking’s, but Alperovitch said "We have no evidence that this is government sponsored in any way." Hackers here in America are arrested if they are found and the same go for them in China. Though America is being hacked, the hacking in China is a big problem for them too. Some people think that the hacking in China was the reason behind Google Inc. to pull out of China. These hacking incidents show how the internet today is just not secure. This shows how your information on your own computer could be at risk from hackers.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/10/chinese-hackers-hit-major-energy-firms/

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