A new report on Chinese hackers depicts a wide-ranging cyberwar campaign against an array of American targets, from computer security providers to power plant suppliers.
But according to The New York Times, a failed big deal by the Coca-Cola Company was also in the sights of the Chinese army’s hacker corps.
In 2008, Coca-Cola bid about $2.4 billion for the China Huiyan Juice Group, a Beijing-based beverage company, in what would have been oneof the biggest foreign acquisitions ever in that country.
Six months later, Chinese regulators blocked the proposed transaction on antitrust grounds, contending that it would have given a foreign company too much power over the domestic juice market. While Huiyan’s investors largely supported the deal, the transaction raised nationalist hackles within the general public.
But something else may have been at work. From Monday’s article in The Times:
As Coca-Cola executives were negotiating what would have been the largest foreign purchase of a Chinese company, Comment Crew was busy rummaging through their computers in an apparent effort to learn more about Coca-Cola’s negotiation strategy.
The attack on Coca-Cola began, like hundreds before it, with a seemingly innocuous e-mail to an executive that was, in fact, a spearphishing attack. When the executive clicked on a ma! licious link in the e-mail, it gave the attackers a foothold inside Coca-Cola’s network. From inside, they sent confidential company files through a maze of computers back to Shanghai, on a weekly basis, unnoticed.
