Tag Archive for: expose

Leaked documents expose shady practices and corruption in China’s hacking industry | Dake Kang & Zen Soo



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Leaked documents expose Chinese hacking company for shady business practices


The hotel was spacious. It was upscale. It had a karaoke bar. The perfect venue, the CEO of the Chinese hacking company thought, to hold a Lunar New Year banquet currying favor with government officials. There was just one drawback, his top deputy said.

“Who goes there?” the deputy wrote. “The girls are so ugly.”

So goes the sordid wheeling and dealing that takes place behind the scenes in China’s hacking industry, as revealed in a highly unusual leak last month of internal documents from a private contractor linked to China’s government and police. China’s hacking industry, the documents reveal, suffers from shady business practices, disgruntlement over pay and work quality, and poor security protocols.

GOP REP SOUNDS ALARM ON GROWING CHINESE INFLUENCE IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

Private hacking contractors are companies that steal data from other countries to sell to the Chinese authorities. Over the past two decades, Chinese state security’s demand for overseas intelligence has soared, giving rise to a vast network of these private hackers-for-hire companies that have infiltrated hundreds of systems outside China.

chinese hacking company

The interior of the I-Soon office is shown as the company faces allegations over shady business practices, disgruntled employees, and poor security protocols.  (AP Photo/Dake Kang)

Though the existence of these hacking contractors is an open secret in China, little was known about how they operate. But the leaked documents from a firm called I-Soon have pulled back the curtain, revealing a seedy, sprawling industry where corners are cut and rules are murky and poorly enforced in the quest to make money.

Leaked chat records show I-Soon executives wooing officials over lavish dinners and late night binge drinking. They collude with competitors to rig bidding for government contracts. They pay thousands of dollars in “introduction fees” to contacts who bring them lucrative projects. I-Soon has not commented on the documents.

CHINA’S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE PLAGUED BY CORRUPTION AND POLITICAL BACKLASH: REPORT

Mei Danowski, a cybersecurity analyst who wrote about I-Soon on her blog, Natto Thoughts, said the documents show that China’s hackers for hire work much like any…

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A Flaw in Millions of Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm GPUs Could Expose AI Data


As more companies ramp up development of artificial intelligence systems, they are increasingly turning to graphics processing unit (GPU) chips for the computing power they need to run large language models (LLMs) and to crunch data quickly at massive scale. Between video game processing and AI, demand for GPUs has never been higher, and chipmakers are rushing to bolster supply. In new findings released today, though, researchers are highlighting a vulnerability in multiple brands and models of mainstream GPUs—including Apple, Qualcomm, and AMD chips—that could allow an attacker to steal large quantities of data from a GPU’s memory.

The silicon industry has spent years refining the security of central processing units, or CPUs, so they don’t leak data in memory even when they are built to optimize for speed. However, since GPUs were designed for raw graphics processing power, they haven’t been architected to the same degree with data privacy as a priority. As generative AI and other machine learning applications expand the uses of these chips, though, researchers from New York–based security firm Trail of Bits say that vulnerabilities in GPUs are an increasingly urgent concern.

“There is a broader security concern about these GPUs not being as secure as they should be and leaking a significant amount of data,” Heidy Khlaaf, Trail of Bits’ engineering director for AI and machine learning assurance, tells WIRED. “We’re looking at anywhere from 5 megabytes to 180 megabytes. In the CPU world, even a bit is too much to reveal.”

To exploit the vulnerability, which the researchers call LeftoverLocals, attackers would need to already have established some amount of operating system access on a target’s device. Modern computers and servers are specifically designed to silo data so multiple users can share the same processing resources without being able to access each others’ data. But a LeftoverLocals attack breaks down these walls. Exploiting the vulnerability would allow a hacker to exfiltrate data they shouldn’t be able to access from the local memory of vulnerable GPUs, exposing whatever data happens to be there for the taking, which could include queries…

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UK and allies expose Russian intelligence services for cyber campaign of attempted political interference – National Cyber Security Centre



UK and allies expose Russian intelligence services for cyber campaign of attempted political interference  National Cyber Security Centre

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