The three major hacker groups that keep Americans awake at night

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In light of recent hacker attacks, these hacker groups have also sparked people's curiosity to find out what's going on.

Ironically, these potentially scary hacker groups have unscary names.

"Deep Panda", "Putter Panda" and "Flying Kitten" have always been hacker groups that security technology company CrowdStrike has closely watched.

CrowdStrike currently monitors more than 70 hacker groups around the world, most of which are located in China, Russia and Iran.

Here are the three major hacker groups that are keeping Americans awake at night:

Abyss Panda

CrowdStrike has long considered Deep Panda to be the most powerful Chinese hacker group today. The group is known for targeting national security think tanks and infiltrating foreign defense and telecommunications industries. In early July, CrowdStrike discovered that the group had set its sights on individuals with ties to Iraq and the Middle East.

Putter Panda

Since 2007, Putter Panda's primary targets have been the defense and aviation industries of the United States and Europe. Putter Panda is headquartered in Shanghai. In May this year, the US government filed a lawsuit against Putter Panda members for the first time on charges of so-called cyber espionage. The Chinese government denies any involvement in cyber attacks.

Flying Cat

Since mid-January this year, the hacker group "Flying Cat" based in Iran has become the focus of CrowdStrike's monitoring. The targets of "Flying Cat" are mainly several major US defense contractors and Iranian dissidents. "Flying Cat" was previously known as "Ajax Security Team". The organization has shifted its focus to cyber espionage and targeted attacks.

Data provided by CrowdStrike shows that Flying Cat has set its sights on the US defense industry at the beginning of this year, using phishing emails and fraudulent Microsoft Outlook network access to infiltrate defense contractor accounts. Technology website InformationWeek previously reported that Flying Cat also used anti-censorship tools infected with malicious viruses to lure Iranian dissidents.

The attack suggests that Flying Cat is either a hacker unit of the Iranian government or a private organization hired by the Iranian government to suppress dissidents.

Warning the World

In its 2013 Global Threat Report, released in January, Crowdstrike predicted that such third-party attacks would continue, especially around the G20 summit and midterm elections in November.

Dmitri Alperovitch, CTO and co-founder of Crowdstrike, confirmed that the three major hacker groups mentioned above, as well as other hacker groups mentioned in the 2013 Global Threat Report, are still very active in cyber attack activities.