Report: Chinese Hackers likely behind Cyber Attacks on Southeast Asia and India

Recently admitted by China about having an array of cyber warfare units. And now, a team of researchers at Internet Security Firm, FireEye Inc. said in a report released on Monday about conducting cyber espionage and attack operations for the last decade.

Security Firm said the Cyber Espionage operations dated back to at least 2005 and that operations have been carried out to acquire knowledge of military, political and economic details of the targeted countries which includes many Asian countries, including India, Vietnam, Nepal, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and more.

Some of the cyber-attacks used the form of specially designed emails, written in target's native languages, the report said. But the attached files with the emails which actually appear legitimate contained malware. Some cyber-attacks had penetrated secure networks, by tricking system administrators into downloading the malware on their computers to cut off from the Internet. This malware can be loaded onto administrators portable devices thus infecting other computers also, FireEye said.

"Such a sustained, planned development effort, coupled with the group's regional targets and mission, lead us to believe that this activity is state sponsored, most likely by the Chinese government",FireEye said in the report.

A Online weapon Great Canon is reported to be developed by China. It is possible that the attacks specified by the firm were not run directly by the state, and instead by a professional espionage agency. FireEye detected more than 200 distinction variations of malware developed by the group indicating that is was a prolific effort which shows sheer scale and professionalism of the operations.