U.S. intelligence officials regard China as the most serious long-term threat to American security and have expressed concern about its targeted hacking operations.
Cache of leaked Chinese hacking documents
A collection of released documents from a Chinese state-linked hacking outfit demonstrates that Beijing’s intelligence and military divisions conduct large-scale, systematic cyber assaults against international governments, companies, and infrastructure.
Cybersecurity experts deemed the files uploaded to GitHub last week credible, detailing contracts to extract foreign data over an eight-year period and describing targets in at least 20 foreign governments and territories, including India, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, and Malaysia. BNN, an Indian magazine, had previously reported on the documents.
The released materials unwittingly validated several warnings from security authorities and experts about China’s cyber operations.
Last week, a Chinese state-backed hacking outfit uploaded over 570 documents to Github. The papers, which monitor hacking activity across numerous nations, belong to iSoon, a private security contractor with ties to China’s Ministry of Public Security, according to a revelation in the Post on Wednesday.
“We have every reason to believe this is authentic data from a contractor supporting global and domestic cyber espionage operations out of China,” cybersecurity specialist John Hultquitist told the Post.
In October, FBI Director Christopher Wray told “60 Minutes” that China is undertaking “the biggest hacking program in the world.”
On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Chinese police are looking into the leak, citing two unnamed iSoon employees. The staff informed the AP that the records belonged to the group.
China has, according to Wray, “stolen more of our personal and corporate data than every nation, big or small, combined.”
Wray says the FBI is outnumbered in combating the threat from Chinese hackers.
“If each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intelligence analysts focused exclusively on the China threat, China’s hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1,” Wray said in a speech to legislators last month.