Cyber-Espionage Case Reveals the Shabby State of Online Security | MIT Technology Review

On a related note, see Union: Hackers have personnel data on every federal employee (AP)

"It is the first case the United States has brought against the perpetrators of alleged state-sponsored cyber-espionage, and it has revealed computer-security holes that companies rarely acknowledge in public. Although the attackers apparently routed their activities through innocent people’s computers and made other efforts to mask themselves, prosecutors traced the intrusions to a 12-story building in Shanghai and outed individual intelligence agents. There is little chance that arrests will be made, since the United States has no extradition agreements with China, but the U.S. government apparently hopes that naming actual agents—and demonstrating that tracing attacks is possible—will embarrass China and put other nations on notice, inhibiting future economic espionage."

Cyber-Espionage Case Reveals the Shabby State of Online Security | MIT Technology Review