China Mafia-Style Hack Attack Drives California Firm to Brink

This here is a story of one man's fight to save what is right against the relentless hordes of the Chinese Digital Mafia.  The Bloomberg story is a very good read and would suggest that if you are interested in computer security or wonder how bad things have gotten that you check it out.

For three years, a group of hackers from China waged a relentless campaign of cyber harassment against Solid Oak Software Inc., Milburn’s family-owned, eight-person firm in Santa Barbara, California. The attack began less than two weeks after Milburn publicly accused China of appropriating his company’s parental filtering software, CYBERsitter, for a national Internet censoring project. And it ended shortly after he settled a $2.2 billion lawsuit against the Chinese government and a string of computer companies last April.

In between, the hackers assailed Solid Oak’s computer systems, shutting down web and e-mail servers, spying on an employee with her webcam, and gaining access to sensitive files in a battle that caused company revenues to tumble and brought it within a hair’s breadth of collapse.

In the end, the good guys win but not after having almost lost his business, his life savings and mind.  It would seem that Digital war is just as stressful as the traditional but can be more focused than a smart bomb.

Food for thought, this all started with a phishing email and someone clicking on the link.

Related Web URL: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-27/china-...