Operation Shady RAT

Operation Shady RAT is an ongoing series of cyber attacks starting in mid-2006 reported by Dmitri Alperovitch, Vice President of Threat Research at Internet security company McAfee in August 2011, who also led and named the Night Dragon Operation and Operation Aurora cyberespionage intrusion investigations. The attacks have hit at least 72 organizations, including defense contractors, businesses worldwide, the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee.

The operation, named by Alperovitch as a derivation of the common computer security industry acronym for Remote Access Tool, is characterized by McAfee as "a five year targeted operation by one specific actor". The report suggests that the targeting of various athletic oversight organizations around the time of the 2008 Summer Olympics "potentially pointed a finger at a state actor behind the intrusions". That state actor is widely assumed to be the People's Republic of China.