'Aurora' Cyber Attackers Were Really Running Counter-Intelligence

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.cio.com/article/732122/_Aurora_Cyber_Attackers_Were_Really_Running_Counter_Intelligence?taxonomyId=3089

By Kenneth Corbin
CIO.com
April 22, 2013

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- Some of the hackers involved in the infamous 
Aurora attacks executed from China against dozens of major American 
companies were believed to be running a counter-intelligence operation 
probing whether the U.S. government had uncovered the identity of 
clandestine agents operating in the United States, according to Dave 
Aucsmith, senior director of Microsoft's Institute for Advanced 
Technology in Governments.

Aucsmith, speaking last week at a government IT conference Microsoft 
hosted here at this Washington suburb, outlined a starkly different 
version of the attacks than the assessment that Google offered in the 
bombshell revelation it made in January 2010.

Google had said that the attackers were trying to infiltrate the Gmail 
accounts of Chinese human rights advocates, describing "a highly 
sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure 
originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual 
property from Google."

The view from Redmond was different.

Aucsmith does not challenge Google's description of the attacks, but 
says that Microsoft's analysis concluded that the hackers seeking to 
infiltrate its systems were apparently working under a motivation that 
had little if anything to do with the issues of human rights and 
repression widely associated with the Aurora operation.

[...]


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