14 DAY TRIAL // Not long ago, Google was the target of a complex attack that affected it and 20 other companies. Following the event, there appeared tensions between China (the place where the attack originated) and the international corporation. Quite a while after the event took place, Intel has come forth to reveal that it too was the subject of “a highly sophisticated” virtual assault last month, around the same time as the Google attack took place.
Reuters reports that, according to Intel, hackers attempt to gain access to the Santa Clara chip maker's systems on a “very regular” basis and, thus, such cyber activities are not at all out of the ordinary for the company. Still, the CPU developer chose to at least disclose the timing similarity between the two events, even though it remained silent when it came to how its security team operated when faced with such issues, in order to ensure that the protection remained effective.
“Our security team is very sophisticated and very well connected,” Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said. “We routinely see attacks. It is the unfortunate reality of today’s operating environment. However, we don’t publicly discuss the nature of the attacks, just as we don’t discuss the details of how we work to prevent them.”
Mulloy also explained that Intel had not suffered any sort of confidential data loss and that none of its intellectual properties had been stolen. The company also pointed out the fact that there was no evidence to suggest that the attacks against it and those against Google were related, even though the timings coincided. The chip giant also chose to keep silent on the origin of the attacks and did not go into any details concerning their nature.
Google did not comment on whether or not Intel was one of the 20 companies that were said to have been subject to the same security threat.