With Operation Aurora, professional hackers have taken the hack attacks to ‘never seen before’ ultra sophisticated levels. It’s phenomenal that an attacker can take on not one, not two but  nearly a dozen of highly acclaimed companies including the likes of Google and Adobe.

Operation Aurora is probably the smartest combination of stealth programming, strong encryption and exploitation of a rather unknown vulnerability seen till date. Google claims that the attack has a Chinese origin and is aimed at stealing intellectual property and specifically accessing Gmail accounts of certain human right activists.

After Google, Adobe was quick to acknowledge that it was under attack by Operation Aurora as well. Microsoft decided to publish the security flaw in Internet Explorer that was smartly used by Aurora attackers. McAfee has obtained copies of the malware used for Operation Aurora, gather important information and is continuing with its investigation.

I’m tempted to say that Google’s trouble with China doesn’t appear to be coming to end any time soon!