Security News
A federal judge has convicted a Chinese national of economic espionage, stealing trade secrets and engaging in a conspiracy for the benefit of his country's government. The decision comes five years after Zhang was indicted on charges of conspiring to steal technology from two companies shortly after graduating from the University of Southern California.
United States House representatives last week sent a letter to Zoom to demand explanation for the communication platform's decision to close the accounts of U.S.-based Chinese activists. Last week, Zoom confirmed that, at the request of the Chinese government to block four June 4 meetings that were illegal in the country, it closed the accounts of three individuals located outside China, namely Lee Cheuk-yan, Wang Dan, and Zhou Fengsuo.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Monday urged the European Union to take the lead in setting global standards for tech regulation or risk seeing countries follow China as a model. Breton, one of the EU's top officials on tech policy, said that Facebook and other big tech companies must also live up to certain values.
US officials moved Friday to cut off Chinese tech giant Huawei from global chipmakers, ramping up sanctions on the company seen by Washington as a national security risk. Officials said Huawei had been circumventing sanctions by obtaining chips and components that are produced around the world based on US technology.
Beijing accused the United States on Thursday of smearing China after Washington alleged Chinese hackers were attempting to steal research on developing a vaccine against the coronavirus. US authorities said Wednesday that Chinese hackers were trying to obtain coronavirus data on treatments and vaccines, warning the effort involved Chinese government-affiliated groups and others.
US authorities warned healthcare and scientific researchers Wednesday that Chinese-backed hackers were attempting to steal research and intellectual property related to treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. "We are leading the world in COVID-19 treatment and vaccine research. It is immoral to target China with rumors and slanders in the absence of any evidence," Zhao said.
The startling prediction came from Tobias Ellwood MP, chairman of the Defence Committee, as he presided over a hearing on 5G security and Huawei's involvement. "To put it in cruder terms, Russia is going to become more subservient to China." He added: "If Russia understands the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities or the back doors that China provides, it can be Russia continuing to do those cyber attacks at the behest of China."
New rules that will take effect on June 1 require critical information infrastructure operators in China to conduct cybersecurity reviews when acquiring network products and services. The new rules were first mentioned in the controversial cybersecurity law adopted by China in 2017, and a dozen Chinese government agencies have now shared more information on how tech products should be analyzed.
A Vietnam-linked threat actor tracked as APT32 is believed to have carried out intrusion campaigns against Chinese entities in an effort to collect intelligence on the COVID-19 crisis, FireEye reports. A state-sponsored hacking group also known as OceanLotus and APT-C-00, APT32 is believed to be well-resourced and determined, and was previously observed targeting corporate and government organizations in Southeast Asia.
Semtech, a leading supplier of high performance analog and mixed-signal semiconductors and advanced algorithms, announced that several of its leading customers, including CIAAIoT, EasyLinkin, IOCA, RisingHF, and Winext Technology, have integrated Semtech's LoRa devices and the LoRaWAN protocol with Cloud-based platforms developed by Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud, to deploy smarter Internet of Things-based monitoring applications for residents in quarantine scenarios. Health services employees, including disease control and prevention teams, are increasingly leveraging smarter applications based on IoT to provide efficient, high quality care to their communities.