Security Companies Team Up, Take Down Chinese Hacking Group

daten writes A coalition of security companies has hit a sophisticated hacking group in China with a heavy blow. The effort is detailed in a report released today by Novetta. The coalition, which calls itself Operation SMN, detected and cleaned up malicious code on 43,000 computers worldwide that were targeted by Axiom, an incredibly sophisticated organization that has been stealing intellectual property for more than six years. The group united as part of Microsoft's Coordinated Malware Eradication (CME) campaign against Hikit (a.k.a. Hikiti), the custom malware often used by Axiom to burrow into organizations, exfiltrate data, and evade detection, sometimes for years.

Comments

liar

[iggymanz]

removing malware isn't "taking down" a hacking group; that's just what a victim does

Re:6 years of hacking with the same malware?

[TechyImmigrant]

A sane hacking group would just use the existing hack until it fails, while keeping the new tricks in reserve. Expect more, better hacks from the hackers. They've had a while to work on them.

Re:6 years of hacking with the same malware?

[SeaFox]

Any hacker group that relies on the same malware code on their hacking, for 6 year straight, deserves no respect

Aren't they just being efficient. If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

Chinese government complicity

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Why don't they come out and call a spade a spade...the Chinese government aids, at worst, or allows, at best, this activity. Ask anyone who has spent any time living in China. It's pretty difficult to do anything that they don't like and if when you do manage to circumvent the rules, it's only because you're greasing the palms of someone inside the government. "Hacking group".....riiiiiiiiiight. (rolling eyes)

Re:Chinese government complicity

[Registered Coward v2]

Well, 5 mod points and a dozen donuts for anyone with a solution. It's bad situation considering that U.S. and China depend on each other for business and economic reasons yet we treat each other like adversaries. The Chinese government hasn't given much historical respect to the concerns of intellectual property. When it comes to bringing hard consequences to malicious hackers in their borders they offer us zero cooperation in cases like this. So WTF do we do?

Use it to supplied bad information. Bogus code, code that fails at critical times, misinformation about deals, bargaining positions, etc. Use it as a vector to infect computers with destructive viruses that destroy data, open up their machines for penetration, or cause control systems to fail.. In short, turn the malware into a double agent.

Re:6 years of hacking with the same malware?

[sneakyimp]

I'd be willing to bet that the point of the article in the OP was so that everyone would click on the link and have new malware installed.

Re:6 years of hacking with the same malware?

[Kvasio]

you mean: if it ain't fixed, keep using the break

Yuh Huh

[Greyfox]

Someone's gonna wake up tomorrow with a computer monitor in their bed :-P

Why is this not escalated?

[XB-70]

We pay a fortune in taxes for government agencies: INTERPOL, FBI, RCMP, NSA, CSIS, CIA etc. etc.

It is disgraceful that a consortium of PRIVATE companies has to tackle this issue when there is clear violation of any number of laws at stake.

Get to work, you government agencies, and, instead of spying on your fellow countrymen, do your job.