An analysis released this week by the computer security firm McAfee (.pdf) exposed the widespread hacking of more than 70 corporations and government organizations worldwide. McAfee did not identify the hackers, saying only that evidence pointed to a nation-state as having carried out the attacks. However, some experts were quick to point to China as the most likely culprit.
While he believes that may be an accurate assessment, Chris Bronk, a World Politics Review contributor and fellow in information technology policy at the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, says "the hardest thing on all of this is the attribution problem."
"The whole idea of doing cyber-espionage is, first, don't get caught and, second, when you do get caught, no one knows who did it," Bronk told Trend Lines yesterday.