Mar 1, 2011 17:55 GMT  ·  By

Emails recently leaked from U.S. security firm HBGary suggest that Morgan Stanley was among the victims of Operation Aurora, the cyber espionage attack that targeted Google and other technology giants.

In January 2010, Google issued a somewhat angry announcement that it fell victim to a cyber espionage effort targeting its intellectual property and information about Chinese human rights activists.

The company more or less suggested Chinese government involvement in the operation and outlined plans to unfilter its search engine in China.

This eventually led to Google moving its local operations from mainland China to Hong Kong and redirecting google.cn traffic to google.com.hk.

It was later revealed that over 30 other top companies, including Adobe Systems, Yahoo!, Symantec, Juniper Networks, Rackspace, Northrop Grumman or Dow Chemical, were also targeted in the same attack, dubbed Operation Aurora by McAfee.

According to Businessweek, Morgan Stanley is the first financial organization whose name was revealed in connection with Operation Aurora.

In an email leaked recently by Anonymous, HBGary Principal Consultant Phil Wallisch says about Morgan Stanley that "they were hit hard by the real Aurora attacks (not the crap in the news)."

"They have given me access to a very sensitive report on their Aurora experience. I will honor their wishes about not sharing the info with anyone, but the good news is that I have some great ideas for our final reports," he wrote in another internal message.

HBGary was later hired by Morgan Stanley in 2010 to investigate a different security breach on its network in which let to attackers installing malware designed to steal sensitive data. The bank declined to comment on the Operation Aurora attacks.

A diplomatic cable from the American Embassy in Beijing cited a local informant as claiming that Operation Aurora was sponsored by the Central Politburo of the Communist Party of China.