IBM Accused of Covering Up Major Cyberattacks

William Barlow, former vice president of cybersecurity at IBM, accused the corporation of concealing several major data breaches that occurred over the past decade. According to court documents filed in 2020 and released this week, IBM's network was repeatedly breached by foreign governments, particularly Chinese hackers, between 2013 and 2016, but the company did not notify the public or government agencies. Reported by Techcrunch.com reports .

In his lawsuit, Barlow emphasizes that IBM's core network was regularly compromised by foreign state agents and data was frequently stolen. Specifically, it is alleged that the APT 10 group, linked to the Chinese government, managed to access the company's network more than 56,000 times. This group also gained access to data stored in partnership with AT&T.

According to reports, in 2017, the Five Eyes alliance (intelligence services of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) warned IBM about the cyberattack. A subsequent internal investigation confirmed that hackers had deeply infiltrated the system, but the company could not fully determine the scale of the attack because it did not retain network access logs.

IBM representative Miki Carver denied these allegations, stating that the Department of Justice declined to intervene and expressing confidence that the company acted within the law. Nevertheless, the concealment of such incidents by a company that is a major cybersecurity provider to the US federal government is causing significant debate in the industry.