While China might have gotten a bad rep as being a censorship-heavy country in Asia, it also seems that they have gotten the reputation as being pretty aggressive hackers as well. Recently a report from security firm FireEye (via TechCrunch) has revealed that China has been engaged in a bit of corporate espionage against targets located across Asia.This includes countries such as Singapore, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Nepal, Philippines, and Indonesia, just to name a few. These attacks are said to have been dating as far back as 2005. Speaking to TechCrunch, FireEye’s APAC CTO Bryce Boland said, “There’s no smoking gun that shows this is a Chinese government operation, but all signs point to China. There’s huge intellectual property development in Asia — that’s the new battleground.”
Some of the evidence that FireEye managed to gather of China’s involvement includes an operation manual written in Chinese, a code base developed by Chinese developers, and a related domain that was suspiciously registered by a “tea company” in a rural part of China, all of which points towards China’s involvement in some way or the other. The companies that China has targeted also hints at the country’s involvement in these hacks.
In a statement made by FireEye, “Their targets possess information that most likely serves the Chinese government’s needs for intelligence about key Southeast Asian regional political, economic, and military issues, disputed territories, and discussions related to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.”
That being said this isn’t the first time that China has been accused of spying. Previously Chinese companies operating in the US such as Huawei were accused of manufacturing spy phones for the Chinese government.
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