China-based hackers infiltrated more than 72 organizations over five years

Two cybersecurity companies have alleged that hacker attacks that infiltrated networks in more than 72 organizations originated in China, Bloomberg reported. According to McAfee (part of Intel; INTC.NYSE, INCO.Euronext, INTC.NASDAQ, 4335.HK), the spying began in 2006 and targeted organizations which included the Olympic committees of several nations, the United Nations, and multinational corporations. The attacks originated from servers based in Beijing, Shanghai and other Chinese cities. Dell SecureWorks, which separately traced the attacks’ provenance, came to the same conclusions. “Even we were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organizations and were taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators,” said Dimitri Alperovitch, McAfee’s vice president of threat research. The report’s authors cautioned that it was impossible to say whether the Chinese government was connected to the incidents, but they did note that all the networks targeted by the attacks were outside mainland China.