The news was alive in January 2010 with talk of how Google was thinking of a new approach to China, possibly including to withdraw its business, after what was said to be a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China” in December 2009. Early technical analysis, including to publish that the attack exploits a vulnerability in Internet Explorer that had been unknown to the security industry, seems to have been in the hands of MacAfee, whose page Operation Aurora Hit Google, Others christens the attack and has George Kurtz effusing that “the world has changed” and that “everyone’s threat model now needs to be adapted to the new reality of these advanced persistent threats”.

Great IE Internals discussion of the Aurora bug

Operation Aurora