China Behind 96% of All Cyber-Espionage Data Breaches, Verizon Report Claims

colinneagle writes "Verizon's 2013 Data Breach Investigation Report is out and includes data gathered by its own forensics team and data breach info from 19 partner organizations worldwide. China was involved in 96% of all espionage data-breach incidents, most often targeting manufacturing, professional and transportation industries, the report claims. The assets China targeted within those industries included laptop/desktop, file server, mail server and directory server, in order to steal credentials, internal organization data, trade secrets and system info. A whopping 95% of the attacks started with phishing to get a toehold into their victim's systems. The report states, 'Phishing techniques have become much more sophisticated, often targeting specific individuals (spear phishing) and using tactics that are harder for IT to control. For example, now that people are suspicious of email, phishers are using phone calls and social networking.' It is unknown who the nation-state actors were in the other 4% of breaches, which the report says 'may mean that other threat groups perform their activities with greater stealth and subterfuge. But it could also mean that China is, in fact, the most active source of national and industrial espionage in the world today.'" The report also notes that financially-motivated incidents primarily came from the U.S. and various Eastern European countries.

Comments

I must admit a begrudging respect for China

[TWiTfan]

I kind of envy having a government so willing to go to bat for its native industry that it's willing to go as far as to steal IP for them. In my country, the government is more than happy to sit back and watch all its industries outsource and lay off everyone, and nationalism is regarded as a bad word. China, if nothing else, believes in China.

Re:I must admit a begrudging respect for China

[gl4ss]

they just have so many people and not so many things to order them to do. but imagine the disappointment when they spend two man years to phish something trivial they then notice they already had since they had been producing the fucking thing for five years!

aaanyhow.. even westerners would be better off bouncing their attacks through china.

Me Chinese!

[Anonymous Coward]

Me Chinese!
Exploit Socks
Me Put malware
On your box!

the other 4 percent

[nimbius]

was divided among local, state and federal government in their tireless quest to shit all over the middle east and shred the constitution.