Nortel veteran claims Chinese hackers stole its data for nearly 10 years

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that telecoms firm Nortel Networks was repeatedly breached by Chinese hackers for almost a decade.

The newspaper cited Brian Shields, a former Nortel employee who led an internal investigation into the security breaches, and published claims that the hackers stole seven passwords from the company’s top executives – including the CEO – which granted them widespread access to the entire Nortel network.

According to the WSJ’s report, the security breaches dated as far as back as at least 2000, and spyware planted by the hackers made it possible to steal intellectual property, including technical papers, R&D reports, business plans, employee emails and other documents.

“They had access to everything. They had plenty of time. All they had to do was figure out what they wanted,” said…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.