Multiple gangs of Chinese cyberespionage hackers are targeting the healthcare and medical/life sciences industries.

Most industries are fair game for cyber espionage these days, so it's no surprise that the healthcare and medical industry would be on the list, but to date, it's been a field more abused by cybercriminals motivated by medical identity theft and other financial fraud.

Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer with CyberSquared, says his firm can confirm at least three advanced persistent threat (APT) groups out of China that have targeted organizations in the medical field, including one group that posed as a life sciences and drug discovery company out of Beijing to lure and drop drive-by malware on related companies from that industry. The second was the group behind the well-known malware Sykipot used in various APT-type attacks, and the third was the gang behind the VOHO targeted attack campaign -- which CyberSquared found targeting the National Institute of Health.