ABSTRACT

Digital transformation doesn't stop at industrial espionage. In view of the short update cycles in the IT sector, economically meaningful marketing of software and software-based products is hardly conceivable without the associated support sites. Information cannot always be stolen from experts' computers via download or Trojan. Sometimes the classical data carrier is the first choice–really pretty obvious in the era of USB sticks and external hard disks. As the security software company McAfee, a subsidiary of the processor manufacturer Intel, discovered in 2011, internal information had been stolen by hackers from six American and European oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP. According to the report in the New York Times, there was disagreement amongst security experts about the evaluation of the findings. Whilst some assumed that the training establishments served as cover organisations for the Chinese authorities, others believed the attacks could also come from a third country or were simply intended to cover up large-scale industrial espionage activity.