Chinese hackers have been launching sophisticated cyberattacks to target business and government systems, Wall Street Journal reported. Through newer methods, they have been able to enter networks to spy on victims while remaining undetected.
The report said that the findings came from Google’s Mandiant division. The latest revelations say that hackers are targeting devices on the edge of networks, instead of trying to get behind a firewall. These devices are generally not protected by antivirus or endpoint detection software, the report stated.
Mandiant found that the attacks have been coming from China-based, state-sponsored hackers based on the malware code they use and the government and business victims they target. The report states that China has regularly denied conducting any such operations.
A blog post by Mandiant stated that hackers are targeting technologies that do not support endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions, including firewalls, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, hypervisors and virtual private network (VPN) technologies.
“Mandiant has investigated dozens of intrusions at Defense Industrial Base (DIB), government, technology and telecommunications organizations over the years where suspected China-nexus groups have exploited zero-day vulnerabilities and deployed custom malware to steal user credentials and maintain long-term access to the victim environments,” the company said in the blog post.
Three months back, Zurich CEO Mario Greco warned that cyberattacks could pose a much larger threat to insurers as compared to pandemics and climate change.
“What will become uninsurable is going to be cyber,” Greco told the Financial Times on December 26. “What if someone takes control of vital parts of our infrastructure, the consequences of that?”
(With inputs from agencies)
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