Shady RAT: The biggest ever cyber-attack?

The media are in a frenzy today, excitedly reporting the “biggest ever cyber-attack”.

The reason? A report published today by McAfee called “Revealed: Operation Shady RAT”, explains that the security firm stumbled across logs on a server used by hackers, and ascertained that organisations and governments around the world had been targeted by malware that could have stolen information from their systems.

The report names the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada, the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and assorted companies amongst the victims.

To be honest, there’s nothing particularly surprising in McAfee’s report to those of us who have an interest in computer security.

For instance, we already all know that companies get targeted by hackers, who install malware to gain remote access to…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity 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 analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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