Operation Aurora, and a brief video apology from me

Paul Ducklin of this parish (well, actually our Sydney, Australia office) has made a terrific video, demonstrating the Internet Explorer vulnerability at the heart of the Operation Aurora/Google vs China hacking story.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLnne4itbvA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]

If you watch the video you can see:

  • A brief recap of the impact Operation Aurora has made in the news
  • A quick explanation of how the Internet Explorer vulnerability works
  • A live demo of the Internet Explorer vulnerability being demonstrated – don’t worry, it’s a video. It’s quite safe. :)
  • A reminder of “Don’t panic” in large friendly letters
  • A demonstration that Sophos Anti-Virus can protect you

By the way, SophosLabs is now seeing copycat websites exploiting the Internet Explorer vulnerability.

Oh, and if you have the ears of a dolphin (who apparently, despite having no visible ears, have the best hearing of the animal kingdom) you can very briefly hear me apologise for wrongly speculating that malicious Adobe PDFs would get the blame for the Google hack. It’s about 24 seconds in.

Sign up to our free newsletter.
Security news, advice, and tips.

But really, you should watch the video for Duck’s excellent explanation of the Internet Explorer vulnerability and his demonstration of how it works – not my grovelling apology.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "The AI Fix" and "Smashing Security" podcasts. Follow him on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, or drop him an email.

What do you think? Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.