Morgan Stanley experienced a “very sensitive” break-in to its network by the same China-based hackers who attacked Google Inc’s computers more than a year ago, according to leaked e-mails from a cyber--security company working for the bank.
The e-mails from the Sacramento, California-based computer security firm HBGary Inc, which identify the first financial institution targeted in the series of attacks, said the bank considered details of the intrusion a closely guarded secret.
“They were hit hard by the real Aurora attacks (not the crap in the news),” wrote Phil Wallisch, a senior security engineer at HBGary, who said he read an internal Morgan Stanley report detailing the so-called Operation Aurora attacks.
The nickname came from McAfee Inc, a Santa Clara, -California-based cyber--security firm, which said the attacks occurred for about six months starting in June 2009 and marked “a watershed moment in cyber security.”
The number of companies known to be hit in the attacks was initially estimated at 20 to 30 and now exceeds 200, said Christopher Day, senior vice president for Terremark Worldwide Inc, which provides information--technology security services.
The HBGary e-mails don’t indicate what information may have been stolen from Morgan Stanley’s databanks or which of the world’s largest merger adviser’s multinational operations were targeted.
“They have given me access to a very sensitive report on their Aurora experience,” Wallisch wrote in a May 10 e-mail to HBGary president Penny Leavy--Hoglund.
“I will honor their wishes about not sharing the info with anyone, but the good news is that I have some great ideas for our final reports,” he said in the e-mail.
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Steven Chabinsky said that hackers had increasingly targeted information related to mergers and acquisitions, data that can give companies involved an advantage in negotiations.
Google said in January last year after an attack lasting for months that it was one of 20 major US companies breached by hackers using China-based servers, an event that McAfee chief technology officer George Kurtz described as the “largest and most sophisticated cyberattack we have seen in years targeted at specific corporations.”
The attacks also led Google to stop censoring search results generated by its Chinese search engine Google.cn. After months of negotiations with Chinese officials, Google began to shutter the site in March last year, redirecting users to the company’s service in Hong Kong.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained