Nitro targets chemical and defense industry

Okay, well, here’s a new term to worry about: Nitro. That’s the name being given to a hacking attempt being widely reported yesterday by Symantec. It was aimed at the chemical and defense industries and at least 48 companies were hit. The attack used fairly pedestrian methods, at least by modern hacking standards. The bright side, if there is one, is that at least we seem to know who’s responsible: a man in his 20s living in China. And the motivation doesn’t seem to be to anything overtly destructive or violent, just the theft of intellectual property, probably to turn around and sell.