Biggest Hack In History: Canada a major victim, but the whole world should be scared

Canadian government agencies and companies were infiltrated during a massive global cyber attack that stretched more than five years, a new report suggests.

Over 70 key ogranizations, including the United Nations and U.S. government, have been compromised in the attack, the scale of which may be the largest of all time.

Security firm McAfee uncovered the security breaches and said one foriegn country behind the attacks. The company declined to specify, but speculation points to China.

The Canadian government agencies were targeted multiple times for a total of seven months throughout 2009 and 2010. Attacks involved malicious emails sent to high-ranked officialls with links infected with sophisticated viruses, and plagued PDF files.

The attacks have been dubbed by McAfee Operation Shady RAT, with RAT standing for "remote access tool," software used by hackers and security specialists to access computers remotely. 

Other countries whose governments were hacked included Taiwan, Vietnam, India, and South Korea, as well as numerous defence conrtactors and high-tech corporations.  The United Nations had its secret data compromised for two years.

It's suspected by some that the amount of companies affected has been severely underestimated, with the possibility that virtually every Fortune 2000 company had private information compromised in some manner.

How will the data be used? No one can be certain, but the hackers now have a tremendous competitive advantage over other countries and could pose a serious economic threat on a global scale.

Operation Shady RAT has been described as the "biggest transer of … intellectual property in history."

If it's not China, insiders say, it "could be" Russia. But given the evidence, they explain, China is the most likely perpetrator.