Oh Snap, China!

The graphic above looks way too aesthetically pleasing for the data it's alleged to represent.

At McAfee's blog last night, and reported later by Reuters this morning, a number of government agencies and large, powerful companies have been duped in the largest cyberattack ever seen. So large, in fact, that it's been going on for years and nobody has had any idea.

McAfee's not trying to point any fingers, but the ATTACKS themselves came from China. "Experts" (as most of the media are now calling "people we managed to get on the phone in the last 45 minutes") are prone to agree ("WITHOUT POINTING ANY FINGERS! MAKE SURE YOU WRITE THAT DOWN!") that the attacks may be China-sponsored, but also may be Russians operating in China. Wait, how do you just randomly gather that?

Also, has anyone ever used McAfee? I don't trust them with my computer I built from my sister's spare parts (her computer, that is, although, in an unrelated tangent, my sister and I ARE both fully mechanical). I would never trust them with any sort of opinion on international diplomacy.

Anywho, the infographic above relates to how many of what were attacked according to McAfee. Targets are listed to include the U.N., governments of the U.S., Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, India, along with a fairly large number of other organizations (including the International Olympic Committee, BEFORE the Beijing Olympics! Saucy!).

Here's a link to the actual McAfee post (on a blog? These are news now?).

Here's a link to 2 sides of the coverage of this event, from Reuters and Sophos.

The common opinion, at this point, looks like whatever happened was pretty big, however, nobody really knows much about who's responsible, where all this data is going (except maybe China) or what it's being used for.

But if China really does own as much of the U.S. as everyone tells me they do (nobody really tells me that, I think it was a big news story last year and I've fused it into a fake social memory) and they also have all of our crazy digital secrets ("Oh wow! The U.S. is broke, I couldn't have learned that by watching the news"), then that's actually pretty impressive. But I'm not going to point any fingers.

Except at LulzSec. Just because I blame LulzSec for everything. But I'd trust them over McAfee any day.