An attack in early 2014 on Anthem, the No. 2 US health insurer, was by most measuring sticks a historic hack, leading to the biggest healthcare data breach ever. New evidence unearthed by researchers from security firm Symantec, however, shows it was business as usual for the hacking group, which over the past three years has carried out more than a dozen similar attacks.
Dubbed Black Vine, the group is well financed enough to have a reliable stream of weaponized exploits for zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Since 2012, the gang has brazenly infected websites frequented by executives in the aerospace, energy, military, and technology industries and then used the compromises to siphon blueprints, designs, and other intellectual property from the executives' organizations.