Massive hack attack hit 760 companies

RSA's SecurID tags were hardly the only victims to be brutalized by a massive cyberattack that occured earlier this year.

A massive cyberattack that led to avulnerability in RSA's SecurID tags earlier this year also victimized Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many other big-named companies, according to a new analysis released this week.

A list of 760 organizations that were attacked was presented to Congress recently and published by security analyst Brian Krebs on his blogMonday.

The list is the first glimpse into the pervasiveness of the attack that brought RSA to its knees. Those in the security industry have long suspected that RSA was not the hack's only victim, but no other companies have been willing to talk publicly about whether they had also been compromised.

The names mentioned on Krebs' list include about a fifth of the Fortune 100, as well as many other massive corporations.

Abbot Laboratories (ABT, Fortune 500), Charles Schwab (SCHW,Fortune 500), Freddie Mac, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) are all named.

Tech giants like Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500), IBM (IBM, Fortune 500), Intel (INTC, Fortune 500), Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), Facebook, and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) are also included, as well as government agencies like the European Space Agency, the IRS, and the General Services Administration. Government security contractor Northrop Grumman (NOC, Fortune 500) was on the list, as was MIT.

The list of affected companies was obtained from a breached "command and control" server, the name for a machine that hackers use to direct the fleets of compromised PCs that they have gained control over. Krebs said he wasn't at liberty to reveal how that server was discovered or who analyzed the data.

The names came to light after researchers traced back the corporate networks that were communicating with the server that attacked RSA. The first victims started "phoning home" as early as November 2010, Krebs said.

But there's a big caveat: As Krebs was quick to note, many Internet service providers were on the list, most likely because their subscribers were attacked using their network, not because the companies themselves were compromised. That means that companies like Comcast (CMCSA,Fortune 500), Windstream (WIN), Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500), AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and Sprint (S, Fortune 500) may be off the hook.