Operation Aurora
The campaign that reached Google, and changed what companies would say in public
In January 2010 Google disclosed publicly that it had been the target of a sophisticated intrusion originating from China, aimed in part at the accounts of Chinese human rights activists, and that at least twenty other large companies had been hit in the same campaign. The initial access used a zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer.
Adobe, Juniper, Rackspace and others were named or confirmed involvement. Google subsequently withdrew from the Chinese search market.
The first time a company of that size publicly named a nation state, and the beginning of the modern era of threat intelligence, attribution and public disclosure as strategy rather than embarrassment.
The Hacker Chronicles
Volume Two — Going Pro
This page is the summary. The chapter — ‘Aurora’ — follows the case properly: what was known at the time, who decided what, and how it actually unfolded rather than how it was later retold.
Two more volumes this year.
Going Geopolitical in October, Going Strategic in December.
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