Operation Aurora (2010)

In January 2010, Google publicly announced that it had suffered, in late 2009, a sophisticated intrusion from China targeting its intellectual property and the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The company revealed that more than twenty other firms, in technology, finance, defense and chemicals, had been hit by the same campaign, which researchers named Aurora. The attackers had exploited an unknown vulnerability in the browser most widely used in companies, through links sent to targeted employees. The announcement broke with the practice of silence: for the first time, a major company publicly accused a state of spying on it, and drew commercial consequences, scaling back its activities in China. The operation brought the notion of advanced persistent threat into common use, and showed that private companies are intelligence targets just like government bodies. For insurance, Aurora raises a question still largely unanswered: the theft of trade secrets by a state is a real, sometimes considerable loss, yet almost impossible to value, prove and assign to a policy year. Cyber policies cover response and notification costs, rarely the value of the intellectual property lost.