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

Re:I must admit a begrudging respect for China

[s.petry]

The difference is, in countries like China (and I think #2 is actually Israel, or at least they used to be WAY up there in espionage in the US)...it is state sponsored.

In the US, it is largely left up to the private industry. Any US spying, stays mostly in govt hands, things learned by the US govt isn't given freely to US industries.

Pure speculation, and not even "good" speculation. The fact is, you know very little about what the US Government does with it's data. The reason for this is that nearly all of the spying we do is classified as State secrets. I'd bet you a dozen donuts that the US does way more spying than China. Maybe not domestically, but our foreign espionage would dwarf China.

The difference is really, that you are told that China is full of bad guys. You are told that the US is full of heroes saving the world from Governments like China, Libya, and Egypt. Be very cautious with what you are told! Your belief's may not match reality very closely.