Eugene Kaspersky accuses McAfee of crying wolf over Shady RAT

Kaspersky Lab founder Eugene Kaspersky has taken to the web to have a pop at rival McAfee's recent Operation Shady RAT revelations, claiming that many of the report's conclusions are unfounded and that the firm is being deliberately alarmist.

The report detailed a large-scale and long-term hacking attack spanning 14 countries and compromising 72 organisations, including the United Nations, defence contractors and even Olympic committees, over a five-year period.

The attackers, who many believe to have links with the Chinese authorities, are said to have begun with a standard spear phishing email sent to someone with appropriate access rights in a company. The malware is then said to have initiated a backdoor communication channel to the command-and-control web server.