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McAfee: Intellectual Property Poorly Guarded In Aurora Attacks
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2010-03-04
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Google and the other companies that were affected by Operation Aurora had some commendable security measures in place, according to a new report from McAfee; you might consider them the virtual equivalents of steel doors with reinforced hinges. However, it turned out that the companies might have left their internal safe doors unlocked.
 | | McAfee: Intellectual Property Poorly Guarded In Aurora Attacks |  |
George Kurtz, McAfee's CTO, explained late yesterday on the McAfee Security Insights Blog that he discovered some problems with respect to the companies' source code configuration management systems (SCMs). Enough problems to call them "inherently insecure," in fact, as he found that attackers were able to "siphon out source code or, worse, modify and add code."
Kurtz then continued, "SCMs are used by software engineers to manage their projects and are used to store source code, the crown jewels of any tech company."
And as you might suppose, leaving one's intellectual property exposed isn't the best way to run a business.
In response, McAfee is taking a closer look at how SCMs should be secured, and Perforce, which is a popular management system, has been scrutinized in what's supposed to be the first in a series of white papers.
These lessons should benefit a wide range of individuals and companies, considering that many organizations have probably modeled their security systems after what Google, Adobe, Rackspace, and other corporations hit by Operation Aurora have in place. Hopefully an Operation Aurora 2 will become impossible as a result. Or at the least, perhaps some less organized and skilled hackers will be repelled.
Meanwhile, efforts to identify the people behind Operation Aurora haven't progressed much since the last time we discussed them. A security company called Damballa did issue a statement earlier this week alleging that the hackers used a "garden variety botnet" and were "more amateur than average," but Google has disputed this claim.
About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews, InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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