Pescatore prefers to use the label "advanced targeted threats" when he's taking queries from Gartner clients about what they should do to protect themselves. And he puts much less emphasis on "advanced" than on "targeted."

"These attacks are only 'advanced' in the sense that they got by some defenses," he said, echoing Kaspersky's argument and McAfee's revised description of the hacker operation.

"The best examples this year were Sony and RSA," said Pescatore, talking about the hacks of the electronics giant and the security firm whose SecurID tokens are widely used in enterprises. "They were obviously targeted, but not by some super evil malware. They only succeeded because [they went up against] crappy defenses."

While traditional antivirus [vendors] may be able to spot and deflect many kinds of attacks, they're not well-equipped to handle targeted attacks. But there are technologies able to detect such attacks, if not entirely prevent them, Pescatore said, from the likes of vendors such as FireEye, not McAfee or Kaspersky.

"About every five years, we get in a phase when attacks get ahead of defenses, and we're in one now," said Pescatore.