The former telecommunications giant, Nortel, has been allegedly hacked since 2000 by Chinese hackers according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

For more than a decade China-based cyber-spies have had access to documents, project plans, email addresses and, according to a former Nortel employee who initiated an internal investigation of the hacks, Brian Shields, basically anything they wanted to get their hands on. Claiming Nortel did nothing to take the attacks seriously.

Shields told the Wall Street Journal: “They had plenty of time. All they had to do was figure out what they wanted,” adding that they “had access to everything”.

The hackers were able to strategically place spyware like trojan horses so deeply into Nortel employee’s computers that they were missed by any type of spyware detection.

Nortel, which is now in the process of liquidating all it’s assets after filing for bankruptcy, can’t guarantee that some of the computers sold to companies like Ciena Corp, Ericsson, Avaya Inc. and Genband Corp. are not still infected.

How Suspected China-Based Attacks Happened

According to the report, the Chinese hackers obtained usernames and passwords of seven Nortel executives included a former chief executive of the company.

Once the hackers had these credentials they were able to penetrate Nortel’s internal systems freely and plant spyware as they pleased, ensuring access to all communication and documents.

China Denies Allegations

Since these initial reports of where the attacks originated from are to be considered speculation, it is understandable that the Chinese government is claiming that these reports are “irresponsible”.

It is common practice for hackers to compromise then proxy from other computers and servers from around the world to avoid their source IP address being detected.

A Sophos senior technology consultant, Graham Cluley, explained on his blog, “Yes, the data might have been transmitted to an IP address based in Shanghai, but it is possible that a computer in Shanghai has been compromised by.. say.. a remote hacker in Belgium.

“It’s all too easy to point a finger, but it’s dangerous to keep doing so without proof.”

Nortel Did Nothing To Stop or Disclose Attacks

In 2004 the breach was noticed when a Nortel employee noticed an usual set of documents was being downloaded by a senior executive that denied having made the downloads.

According to Shields, the network was “soft and gooey,” making it easy for hackers to navigate Nortel’s internal network once the initial breach had been made. Without multiple layers of defense within a network security experts have always known there is nothing to stop hackers once they’ve penetrated a network’s perimeter.

The reports show that Nortel did nothing to discover the level in which their computers and products had been compromised over their six month investigation. “Nothing from a security standpoint” had been done besides resetting of passwords the Journal said.

Shields confirmed that Nortel computers continued to send files and data to the same Shanghai-based IP addresses six months after the first discovery of the spyware.

The telecommunications giant could not confirm, nor made any effort to determine whether or not their products were still infected before liquidating them.

Nortel is not responding to any requests for comment at this time.