Chinese Hackers | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday said there are no indications that the cyber attack targeting the Treasury Department impacted other federal agencies. The agency said it's working closely with the Treasury Department and BeyondTrust to get a better understanding of the breach and mitigate its impacts. "The security of federal systems and the data they protect is of critical importance to our national security," CISA said . "We are working aggressively to safeguard against any further impacts and will provide updates, as appropriate." The latest statement comes a week after the Treasury Department said it was the victim of a "major cybersecurity incident" that allowed Chinese state-sponsored threat actors to remotely access some computers and unclassified documents. The cyber attack, which came to light in early December 2024, involved a breach of BeyondTrust's systems that allowed the adversary to in...

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Friday issued sanctions against a Beijing-based cybersecurity company known as Integrity Technology Group, Incorporated for orchestrating several cyber attacks against U.S. victims. These attacks have been publicly attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored threat actor tracked as Flax Typhoon (aka Ethereal Panda or RedJuliett ), which was outed last year as operating an Internet of Things (IoT) botnet called Raptor Train . The hacking crew has been active since at least mid-2021, targeting various entities across North America, Europe, Africa, and across Asia. Attacks mounted by Flax Typhoon have typically leveraged known vulnerabilities to gain initial access to victims' computers and then make use of legitimate remote access software to maintain persistent access.  The Treasury Department described Chinese malicious cyber actors as one of the "most active and most persistent threats to U.S. nati...

The problem is simple: all breaches start with initial access, and initial access comes down to two primary attack vectors – credentials and devices. This is not news; every report you can find on the threat landscape depicts the same picture.  The solution is more complex. For this article, we'll focus on the device threat vector. The risk they pose is significant, which is why device management tools like Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) are essential components of an organization's security infrastructure. However, relying solely on these tools to manage device risk actually creates a false sense of security. Instead of the blunt tools of device management, organizations are looking for solutions that deliver device trust . Device trust provides a comprehensive, risk-based approach to device security enforcement, closing the large gaps left behind by traditional device management solutions. Here are 5 of those limitations and how to ov...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a novel surveillance program that's suspected to be used by Chinese police departments as a lawful intercept tool to gather a wide range of information from mobile devices. The Android tool, codenamed EagleMsgSpy by Lookout, has been operational since at least 2017, with artifacts uploaded to the VirusTotal malware scanning platform as recently as September 25, 2024. "The surveillanceware consists of two parts: an installer APK, and a surveillance client that runs headlessly on the device when installed," Kristina Balaam, senior staff threat intelligence researcher at Lookout, said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "EagleMsgSpy collects extensive data from the user: third-party chat messages, screen recording and screenshot capture, audio recordings, call logs, device contacts, SMS messages, location data, [and] network activity." EagleMsgSpy has been described by its developers as a "compreh...

A suspected China-based threat actor has been linked to a series of cyber attacks targeting high-profile organizations in Southeast Asia since at least October 2023. The espionage campaign targeted organizations in various sectors spanning government ministries in two different countries, an air traffic control organization, a telecoms company, and a media outlet, the Symantec Threat Hunter Team said in a new report shared with The Hacker News. The attacks, which leveraged tools previously identified as linked to China-based advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, are characterized by the use of both open-source and living-off-the-land (LotL) techniques. This includes the use of reverse proxy programs such as Rakshasa and Stowaway , as well as asset discovery and identification tools, keyloggers, and password stealers. Also deployed during the course of the attacks is PlugX (aka Korplug), a remote access trojan put to use by several Chinese hacking groups. "The threat ac...

A suspected China-nexus cyber espionage group has been attributed to an attacks targeting large business-to-business IT service providers in Southern Europe as part of a campaign codenamed Operation Digital Eye . The intrusions took place from late June to mid-July 2024, cybersecurity companies SentinelOne SentinelLabs and Tinexta Cyber said in a joint report shared with The Hacker News, adding the activities were detected and neutralized before they could progress to the data exfiltration phase. "The intrusions could have enabled the adversaries to establish strategic footholds and compromise downstream entities," security researchers Aleksandar Milenkoski and Luigi Martire said . "The threat actors abused Visual Studio Code and Microsoft Azure infrastructure for C2 [command-and-control] purposes, attempting to evade detection by making malicious activities appear legitimate." It's currently not known which China-linked hacking group is behind the attacks,...