Dozens of companies around the world were infiltrated by hackers using malicious software programmed to steal information according to a report by CNBC The cybersecurity firm McAfee released research on Dec 12 illustrating the campaign called Operation Sharpshooter The deviant campaign targeted defense and government organizations The attacks ran from October through November The hackers targeted 87 entities using phishing methods through social media The messages were disguised as recruitment campaigns to entice users to open them Once a user opened the message a program called Rising Sun was installed The program gave hackers backdoor access and allowed the criminals to steal information The hackers got IP addresses usernames and network and system settings data Raj Samani a chief scientist at McAfee said theyre still figuring out what the hackers ultimately wanted We know that this campaign was intended to conduct espionage indeed it was only recently launched The question of the ultimate purpose remains to be seen he said In many cases such attacks are a precursor for something else however we are hopeful that identifying and sharing the details will prevent the true nature of the campaign from being carried out The attack could be linked to the Lazarus Group a collective of cybercriminals thats been associated with North Korea as the source code of the attack drew from the groups 2015 hack of South Korea Its not a certainty though and McAfee researchers think it might be too obvious and that the Lazarus connection is a false flag meant to divert attention from the true perpetrators The original malicious documents were hosted in the US Samani said In terms of attribution certainly there are similarities with tactics and code previously attributed to the Lazarus Group however we are conscious that this may be an intentional tactic to make it appear so McAfees report didnt identify companies by name but did say that the attack affected 87 companies across 24 countries including the US UK and Russia LATEST INSIGHTS Our data and analytics team has developed a number of creative methodologies and frameworks that measure and benchmark the innovation thats reshaping the payments and commerce ecosystem Check out the latest PYMNTS report on driving gas pump payments to the C-Store An analysis of bitcoin addresses shows that the majority of bitcoin BTC owners own only one-tenth of the digital currency according to a