US Oil Industry Becomes Cybercriminals Latest Victim

As per a latest report titled "Report on the Capability of the People's Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation", minimum of three US oil firms were attacked by a series of targeted cyber assaults that are supposed to have evolved in China, as per the news published by computerworld.com on January 26, 2010. The companies that were targeted were ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil.

Further details of the attacks, allegedly executed in 2008, reveal that senior level officials of the targeted companies got mails that carried embedded links, which when clicked, installed spyware on systems. The spyware was customized and untraceable by anti-virus products. The data that was sought after through these attacks included e-mail messages, passwords and other details tied to officials having access to proprietary exploration and discovery details.

Authorities of the oil company targeted with the attacks stated that although China's participation in these assaults is far from certain, at least some of the data was found pouring in from one oil firm computer to a computer based in China, reported axcessnews.com on January 27, 2010.

Another oil firm's security personnel individually referred to these infringes as the "China virus".

Reportedly, the attacks have lead to rampant concern and instigated a formal protest from the affected country.

Experts investigating the case informed that two conventional US adversaries, Russia and China, are among the most destructive and proficient at unleashing such attacks. Both countries have large groups of hackers and a deep base of computer security skill.

But the report says if Chinese operators are accountable for even some of the present exploitation efforts attacking the US govt. and commercial networks, then they might have already displayed that they have a mature and operationally skillful computer network operations capability, as per the news published by insurancejournal.com on January 27, 2010.

The report further indicates that the attacks seem to be identical to those that lately targeted the Adobe, Google and some other Silicon Valley organizations.

On the other hand, China tried to defend itself and denied any involvement in the attacks. It claimed that it has also been facing many such cyber assaults for past some time.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 2/3/2010