Security News > 2020 > September > Chinese Hackers Using Publicly Available Resources in Attacks on U.S. Government

Published with contribution from the FBI, the alert presents some of the tactics, techniques, and procedures that the Chinese state-sponsored hackers are employing in attacks on the U.S., such as the heavy use of publicly available tools to hinder attribution.

According to CISA, threat actors affiliated with the Chinese MSS use open-source information in the planning stage of their operations, and engage target networks leveraging readily available exploits and toolkits.

The threat actors, CISA also says, have the ability to "Build and maintain relatively low-complexity capabilities" in support of attacks on federal government networks.

The agency also reveals that it has observed beaconing activity on government networks compromised by Chinese actors, brute-force attacks leveraging credentials available on the Internet, suspicious network scanning activity for ports on target networks, and the targeting of CVE-2020-0688 "To collect emails from the exchange servers found in Federal Government environments."

"CISA asserts with high confidence that sophisticated cyber threat actors will continue to use open-source resources and tools to target networks with a low security posture. When sophisticated cyber threat actors conduct operations against soft targets, it can negatively impact critical infrastructure, federal, and state, local, tribal, territorial government networks, possibly resulting in loss of critical data or personally identifiable information," CISA notes.

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