Medical Industry Under Attack By Chinese Hackers

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/167901121/security/attacks-breaches/240150858/medical-industry-under-attack-by-chinese-hackers.html

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Dark Reading
March 14, 2013

Multiple gangs of Chinese cyberespionage hackers are now targeting the 
healthcare and medical/life sciences industries.

Most every industry is fair game for cyberespionage these days, so it's no 
surprise that the healthcare and medical industry would come up on the list, 
but to date, it's been a field more abused by cybercriminals motivated by 
medical identity theft and other financial fraud.

Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer with CyberSquared, says his firm can 
confirm at least three advanced persistent threat (APT) groups out of China who 
have targeted organizations in the medical field, including one group that 
posed as a life sciences and drug discovery company out of Beijing to lure and 
drop drive by malware on related companies from that industry; the second was 
the group behind the well-known malware Sykipot used in various APT-type 
attacks; and the third, the gang behind the VOHO targeted attack campaign-- 
which CyberSquared found targeting the National Institute of Health.

"Many of these victims have technology or drugs that are a monopoly. If you are 
the first to market with some great new technology breakthrough or drug and you 
get a profit from that research ... It would definitely be an issue for the 
Chinese to target some of these" firms to gain a competitive advantage, Barger 
says.

[...]


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