I just noticed that a reporter had contacted the company in Beijing cited by McAfee as a source of attacks in their Night Dragon report. It was sometimes called Sloppy Night Dragon because the attacks were not well concealed. I started to call it Operation Sloppy Joe because McAfee said the perpetrators were “company men”.

The Associated Press really has the scoop on why it could have been anyone on hosted servers rather than company men:

Song said hackers using his company’s services had an estimated 10,000 “meat computers” controlled remotely without the owners’ knowledge. He said “yes” when asked whether such activities might be improper but he said Chinese authorities never have contacted him about them. He hung up the phone when a reporter asked for other details.

He’s a service provider of meat computers used in Operation Sloppy Joe?

If only I had known sooner…the world is being attacked by “sloppy meat as a service”.

But seriously, that could be a really bad translation.

肉 (pronounced “zh-rou“)

noun
1. meat
2. flesh
3. beef

Maybe he said something like I provide “beefy” computers, or “meat” is Chinese slang for big and powerful if less literally translated. I doubt he said he has fleshy computers, although even that has a plausible translation — easily commandeered.

I bet the provider in Beijing even offers sub-levels of Chinese SMaaS:
1) Rare – infrastructure (RSMaaS)
2) Medium – platform (MSMaaS)
3) Well-done – software (WSMaaS)

Rumor has it that #3 is available with BROCCOLI (Binary Rootkits and Computational Compromise of Logical Information)