China’s Hackers Have Stolen EU, US & Global Secrets
A US Justice Department indictment issued on 20th December, announced the criminal indictment of two individuals, Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, who were alleged to be part of A
The Five Eyes intelligence group (US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) believe that China has been using hackers and sometimes students as short term hackers before they go into often overseas academic study.
These hackers have been used to gather military, technology and commercial information and secrets from other countries in-order to support and improve China’s intelligence and commercial positon in the World. China’s group of best hackers known as APT10, which is short for “Advanced Persistent Threat”, hacking group decided to target not just individual companies in its long-standing efforts to steal intellectual property, but instead focus on so-called Managed Service Providers (MSPs).
They are the companies that offer electronic systems like data backup and password management under a subscription model. If hackers can get into a MSP’s data system, then they can down-load information from the commercial, and or government, data/secrets collections.
The indictment suggests that China by hacking into a particular New York MSP, was able to steal data from companies in lots of countries, from Chile to the Australia.
This secret intrusion process allowed China to gather information from a wide variety of businesses, parts of government and industries from telecoms, IT to banking and manufacturing. Foreign Secretary UK, Jeremy Hunt said:
“This campaign is one of the most significant and widespread cyber intrusions against the UK and allies uncovered to date, targeting trade secrets and economies around the world.
"These activities must stop. They go against the commitments made to the UK in 2015, and, as part of the G20, not to conduct or support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property or trade secrets.
"Our message to governments prepared to enable these activities is clear: together with our allies, we will expose your actions and take other necessary steps to ensure the rule of law is upheld”.
MSP Attack
These hacks often begin with an email saying that a particular issue is important and needs attention. The message appears to be legitimate and seems to come from a supply partner company and asks the receiver to open an attached file.
However, this is a phishing email that, once opened lets the hacker have access to passwords et al. Even if some of the security systems tried to block access the hackers would change the IP address and continue the hacking process.
Once these Chinese hackers had established themselves on a computer, they would download more malware until they get what they are after.
Using these systems and collection processes the hackers have got massive amounts of valuable information and data since at least 2014.
These Chinese hackers stole hundreds of gigabytes of data from dozens of companies, the indictment suggests. While the Justice Department didn’t name any specific victims, the Department of Homeland Security has set up a page providing guidance for any company that thinks it might have been attacked.
No Armistice
This whole process is now set against the China/American agreement from three years ago that they would not hack each other’s commercial businesses. China like other major countries has used these hacking system attacks and intrusions in ways that are similar to different methods that have been used over the centuries for one nation to gather and governmentally and commercial use secrets from another country for their own benefit.
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