Tag Archive for: accuses

China accuses the US of hacking Huawei servers for over a decade

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Tensions between the US and China have escalated further. Beijing has accused Washington of continuously hacking Huawei’s servers and conducting cyberattacks to steal other critical data since 2009. China’s Ministry of State Security has shared a post (spotted by Nikkei Asia) on its official WeChat account regarding this. The post that points out the US government’s efforts against the Chinese tech giant Huawei is titled: “Revealing key despicable methods by US intelligence agencies in cyberespionage and theft.”
How the US hacked Huawei
The post accuses the US of using “big, influential tech companies” to install backdoors in Huawei’s software, apps and equipment.As per the post, Washington was trying to steal vital data from countries including China and Russia.
“In 2009, the Office of Tailored Access Operations started to infiltrate servers at Huawei’s headquarters and continued conducting such surveillance operations,” the post read.
With the increase in geopolitical tensions, both the US and China have been expanding their global spying operations. In July, Beijing-linked hackers reportedly accessed the email account of the US ambassador to China. This operation is believed to have exposed hundreds of emails.
China hit with Second Date spyware
The post notes that China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center has extracted a spyware called Second Date. The spyware was discovered while investigating a cyberattack on Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an. This cyberattack reportedly took place last year.
The ministry found that the Second Date is “cyberespionage malware developed by the US National Security Agency, which operates covertly in thousands of networks in many countries around the world.”

The Second Date spyware was extracted with the help of a company named Qihoo 360. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that this company has previously released findings about US hacking activities against China. However, Qihoo 360 didn’t report the part about Huawei.
“The U.S. had obtained control over tens of thousands of devices and stolen a substantial amount of high-value data,” the ministry said.
China recently advised central and local governmental…

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China calls hacking report ‘far-fetched’ and accuses the US of targeting the cybersecurity industry

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BEIJING — China’s government on Friday rejected as “far-fetched and unprofessional” a report by a U.S. security firm that blamed Chinese-linked hackers for attacks on hundreds of public agencies, schools and other targets around the world.

A foreign ministry spokesperson repeated accusations that Washington carries out hacking attacks and complained the cybersecurity industry rarely reports on them.

Mandiant’s report came ahead of a visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken aimed at repairing relations that have been strained by disputes over human rights, security and other irritants. Blinken’s visit was planned earlier this year but was canceled after what the U.S. government said was a Chinese spy balloon flew over the United States.

The report said hackers targeted email to engage in “espionage activity in support of the People’s Republic of China.”

“The relevant content is far-fetched and unprofessional,” said the Chinese spokesperson, Wang Wenbin.

“American cybersecurity companies continue to churn out reports on so-called cyberattacks by other countries, which have been reduced to accomplices for the U.S. government’s political smear against other countries,” Wang said.

The latest attacks exploited a vulnerability in a Barracuda Networks email system and targeted foreign ministries in Southeast Asia, other government agencies, trade offices and academic organizations in Taiwan and Hong Kong, according to Mandiant.

The American and Chinese flags wave at Genting Snow Park...

The American and Chinese flags wave at Genting Snow Park ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, in Zhangjiakou, China, on Feb. 2, 2022. Hackers linked to China were likely behind the exploitation of a software security hole in cybersecurity firm Barracuda Networks’ email security feature that affected public and private organizations globally, according to an investigation by security firm Mandiant. Credit: AP/Kiichiro Sato

It described the attacks as the biggest cyber espionage campaign known to be conducted by a ”China-nexus threat actor” since a 2021 attack on Microsoft Exchange. That affected tens of thousands of computers.

China is regarded, along with the United States and Russia, as a leader in the development of computer hacking…

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China accuses CIA of orchestrating cyberattacks using advanced tech

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China has accused the U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of conducting cyberattacks against China and orchestrating “peaceful evolution” and “color revolutions” across the globe using advanced technology. 

The CIA established an “empire of hackers” under U.S. supervision, claimed to a report jointly published by China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre (CVERC) and cybersecurity company 360 on Thursday.

“These cyberweapons have undergone strict, standardized, and professional software engineering management, which is uniquely followed by the CIA in developing cyberattack weapons,” said the report.

Investigators were allegedly able to capture and extract a sizable number of Trojan programs, functional plug-ins, and attack platform samples that were allegedly linked to the US intelligence agency, per the report. 

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China Accuses NSA’s TAO Unit of Hacking its Military Research University

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China Accuses NSA

China has accused the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) of conducting a string of cyberattacks aimed at aeronautical and military research-oriented Northwestern Polytechnical University in the city of Xi’an in June 2022.

The National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre (NCVERC) disclosed its findings last week, and accused the Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), a cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit of the National Security Agency (NSA), of orchestrating thousands of attacks against the entities located within the country.

“The U.S. NSA’s TAO has carried out tens of thousands of malicious cyber attacks on China’s domestic network targets, controlled tens of thousands of network devices (network servers, Internet terminals, network switches, telephone exchanges, routers, firewalls, etc.), and stole more than 140GB of high-value data,” the NCVERC said.

CyberSecurity

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), Northwestern Polytechnical University is a “Chinese military university that is heavily involved in military research and works closely with the People’s Liberation Army on the advancement of its military capabilities.”

The agency further said that the attack on the Northwestern Polytechnical University employed no fewer than 40 different cyber weapons that are designed to siphon passwords, network equipment configuration, network management data, and operation and maintenance data.

It also said that the TAO used two zero-day exploits for the SunOS Unix-based operating system to breach servers used in educational institutions and commercial companies to install what it called the OPEN Trojan.

The attacks are said to have been mounted via a network of proxy servers hosted in Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Poland, and Ukraine to relay the instructions to the compromised machines, with the agency noting that the NSA made use of an unnamed registrar company to anonymize the traceable information such as relevant domain names, certificates, and registrants.

Besides OPEN Trojan, the attacks entailed the use of malware it calls “Fury Spray,” “Cunning Heretics,” “Stoic Surgeon,” and “Acid Fox” that are capable of “covert and lasting control” and exfiltrating sensitive…

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