Bloomberg reports that while earlier reports suggested the hackers who targeted Apple and Facebook originated from China, investigators now believe the attacks were Eastern Europe based.
The attacks on Apple, Facebook, Twitter and others are now linked to “an Eastern European gang of hackers that is trying to steal company secrets,” according to Bloomberg, citing unnamed people familiar with an ongoing investigation.
The report says that investigators suspect that the hackers are a criminal group based in Russia or Eastern Europe, and have tracked at least one server being used by the group to a hosting company in the Ukraine. The malware used in the attacks suggest they are the work of cyber-criminals, and not state-sponsored espionage.
Earelier reports, like those from The New York Times had linked the attacks to the Chinese Army, saying there was “little doubt” that an “overwhelming percentage of attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies” originated from a People’s Liberation Army group known as “Unit 61398” based just outside of Shanghai.
Apple announced earlier this week that a small amount of its employees’ laptops had been infected with malware via a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers.
The attacks were believe to have occurred when users visited an iPhone developer community website that hosted the malware.
