Titan Rain

by Chinese
April 22nd 2008

Titan Rain was the designation given by the federal government of the United States to a series of coordinated attacks on American computer systems since 2003; they were known to have been ongoing for at least three years.^[1] The attacks were labeled as in origin, although their precise nature, e.g., state-sponsored espionage, corporate espionage, or random hacker attacks, and their real identities – masked by proxy, zombie computer, spyware/virus infected – remain unknown. The activity known as "Titan Rain" is believed to be associated with an Advanced Persistent Threat.

In early December 2005 the director of the SANS Institute, a security institute in the United States, said that the attacks were "most likely the result of Chinese military hackers attempting to gather information on U.S. systems."^[2]

Titan Rain hackers gained access to many United States defense contractor computer networks who were targeted for their sensitive information,^[1] including those at Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA.

References

^ ^a ^b Bodmer, Kilger, Carpenter, & Jones (2012). Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation. New York: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media. ISBN 0071772499, ISBN 978-0071772495
^ "Hacker attacks in US linked to Chinese military", brietbart.com (retrieved 22 Apr 2008)