Skip to main content

Another Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups discovered - would be the fourth one to be found


A group of cyber security analyst, Intrusion Truth have found their fourth Chinese state-sponsored hacking operation APT 40.
"APT groups in China have a common blueprint: contract hackers and specialists, front companies, and an intelligence officer," the Intrusion Truth team said. "We know that multiple areas of China each have their own APT."
APT stands for Advanced Persistent Threat and is used to describe government supported and sponsored hacking groups. 

Intrusion Truth has previously exposed three government supported APTs, APT3 (believed to operate out of the Guangdong province), APT10 (Tianjin province), and APT17 (Jinan province),  they have now doxed APT40, China's cyber apparatus in the state of Hainan, an island in the South China Sea.

In a blog post, they said they've discovered 13 companies that serve as a front for APT activists. These companies use offline details, overlapping contacts and no online presence except to recruit cyber experts. 

"Looking beyond the linked contact details though, some of the skills that these adverts are seeking are on the aggressive end of the spectrum," the Intrusion Truth team said.

"While the companies stress that they are committed to information security and cyber-defense, the technical job adverts that they have placed seek skills that would more likely be suitable for red teaming and conducting cyber-attacks," they further said. 

APT40 RECRUITMENT MANAGED BY A PROFESSOR

Intrusion Truth was able to link all these companies mentioned above to a single person, a professor in the Information Security Department at the Hainan University.

One of the 13 companies was even headquartered at the university's library. This professor was also a former member of China's military. 

"[Name redacted by ZDNet] appeared to manage a network security competition at the university and was reportedly seeking novel ways of cracking passwords, offering large amounts of money to those able to do so," the anonymous researchers said.Intrusion Truth are pretty credible and have a good track record, US authorities have investigated  two of their three APT expose. 


source https://www.ehackingnews.com/2020/01/another-chinese-state-sponsored-hacking.html

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Provider Volia reported to the cyber police about the intense cyberattacks on the server

Cable provider Volia appealed to the Cyber Police on the fact of fixing a DDoS attack on the Kharkov servers of the company, which has been ongoing since May 31. "For three days, from May 31 to today, the Volia infrastructure in Kharkov is subjected to cyberattacks. At first, they were carried out only on subscriber subsystems, later they switched to telecommunications infrastructure. As a result, more than 100,000 subscribers experienced problems using the Internet, IPTV, multi-screen platform, and digital TV," said the company. In total, the complete lack of access to Volia's services, according to the provider, lasted 12 minutes on May 31, 45 minutes on June 1. There was also an attack on the website volia.com, but it was managed to neutralize. "DDoS attacks were massive and well-organized. The type of attack is UDP flood and channel capacity overflow with the traffic of more than 200 GB. UDP is a protocol used for online streaming services - streaming, te...

Betting and Gambling Websites under Cyberattack from Chinese Hackers

Since last year's summers, Chinese hackers have been targeting South Asian companies that own online gambling and betting websites. The gambling companies in South Asia have confirmed the hacks, whereas rumors of cyberattacks on betting websites have also emerged from Europe, and the Middle East, however, the rumors are yet to confirm, says the reports of cybersecurity group Trend Micro and Talent-Jump. Cybersecurity experts claim that no money was stolen in these hacks against the gambling websites. However, hackers have stolen source codes and databases. The motive of the attack was not a cybercrime, but rather espionage intended attack to gain intelligence. According to the experts, a group named ' DRBControl ' is responsible for the cyberattack. According to the reports of Trend Micro, the hacking techniques used in this particular cyberattack incident is similar to methods done by Emissary Panda and Winnti. All of these hacking groups are from China that has launc...

Apple Plans to Expand Cloud-Based Services, Enters Cloud Computing Space

Apple is planning to invest more in streamlines and increasing its cloud-based and software services like iCloud, Newsplus, and Apple Music. The expansion will go along with devices like iPads, MacBooks, and iPhones. To be entirely sure about the reliability of the cloud-based service on all the Apple devices, the company has decided to rely on AWS (Amazon Web Services) and the cloud division. AWS, as you might know, is a subunit of Amazon that offers cloud-space solutions. According to CNBC's findings, Apple is said to pay Amazon $30 Million monthly for its cloud-based services. It also means that Apple is one of the biggest customers of AWS. Nevertheless, Apple hasn't confirmed whether it uses Amazon's cloud services besides its iCloud. According to experts, Apple also has some of its cloud services on Google. Amazon transformed the management of the data center and hosting of the applications when it brought the AWS. Being the first one to offer services like these,...