According to a report obtained by The Verge, analysts from Florida-based Internet security firm Cymru have uncovered a massive foreign hacking enterprise that has somehow managed to steal more than a terabyte of data per day. Confirmed international targets include military and academic facilities in addition to a major search engine, among others.
While the report doesn't specifically name any potential suspects, Cymru director Steve Santorelli acknowledged that the group almost certainly had to be state-supported, describing the crime as "Internet theft on an industrial level."
This report comes just a week after security firm Mandiant was able to detail the exploits of a Chinese cyber espionage outfit dubbed APT1, which has reportedly stolen hundreds of terabytes of date from 141 American organizations. But that doesn't necessarily help us here, as The Verge notes:
It could be any one of a dozen countries behind the attacks, which is part of the problem. While China has been grabbing all the headlines, the experts interviewed for this story say the threat to U.S. intellectual property and Internet infrastructure is much broader than a single country. According to analysts and researchers our networks are attacked every day by an assortment of digital desperados, electronic spymasters and terrorist groups.
So with these attacks happening on such a massive scale, nothing short of major government intervention can turn around our cyber defense problem at this point. Although, by now—and this is the scary part—it may already be too late. [The Verge]