The Democratization of Espionage
Summary: Krebs on Security published a January 2010 column arguing that over the previous five to seven years the botnet had democratized espionage, letting an individual conduct intelligence reconnaissance and espionage on behalf of a state, on his own, or for corporate gain, where ten to fifteen years earlier only governments and large corporations were targets. Commenters pushed back that the Google espionage attack and attacks on U.S. R&D labs in China and Russia were not carried out via botnet, and that the Advanced Persistent Threat cannot be automated.
Key Takeaway: The piece marks the moment the target set widened from governments and large corporations with intellectual property to any individual, while a commenter notes the APT-style attacks behind incidents like the Google intrusion still required human operators rather than automation.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
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