ABSTRACT
Night Dragon is one of the cyber-attacks that started in mid-2006 and was initially reported by Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of Threat Research at Internet security company McAfee in August 2011, who also led and named the Night Dragon Operation and Operation Aurora cyber-espionage intrusion investigations. Night Dragon attacks are similar to Operation Aurora and other advanced persistent threats (APTs) in that they employ a combination of social engineering and well-coordinated, targeted, cyber-attacks using Trojans, remote control software, and other malware. Well-coordinated, targeted attacks such as Night Dragon, orchestrated by a growing group of malicious attackers committed to their targets, are rapidly on the rise. These targets have now moved beyond the defense industrial base, government, and military computers to include global corporate and commercial targets. While Night Dragon attacks focused specifically on the energy sector, the tools and techniques of this kind can be highly successful when targeting any industry.
