Researchers Vishal Gupta, Daniel Turban, and Nachiket Bhawe extended stereotype threat research to entrepreneurship, a traditionally male-stereotyped profession.
"We have confirmed that five companies have been attacked," said Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's vice president for threat research.
"Rooting an Android device is not an inherently evil practice," notes Andrew Brandt, director of threat research for security firm Blue Coat Systems.
Tyler Moffitt, senior threat research analyst at Webroot, said: "All of the data stolen, including emails, passwords and security questions, make a potent package for identify theft.
David Kennerley, director of threat research at Webroot said: "This is attack on AdultFriendFinder is extremely similar to the breach it suffered last year.
The company's 14-page report, written by Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's vice president for threat research, traced the attacks to at least 2006 and said they peaked in 2009.
At a hacking conference here last year, Michael Sutton, the head of threat research at Zscaler, a security company, said a handful of hackers from China "were clearly very skilled, knowledgeable and were in touch with their counterparts and familiar with the scene in North Korea".
"I am convinced that every company in every conceivable industry with significant size and valuable intellectual property and trade secrets has been compromised (or will be shortly) with the great majority of the victims rarely discovering the intrusion or its impact," Dmitri Alperovitch, then McAfee's vice president for threat research, wrote in his findings.
We already face online surveillance – what happens when even our home appliances add to the pool of personal data collected about us? "As the market is still at a very early stage, a lot of the cool IoT devices we see today are made by startups or at least fast moving teams within bigger companies," warned Mika Stahlberg, director of strategic threat research at F-Secure.
The attack is being called "Night Dragon" by Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's vice president for threat research.
