Security News

Exposed: Chinese smartphone farms that run thousands of barebones mobes to do crime
2024-03-21 06:32

Chinese upstarts are selling smartphone motherboards - and kit to run and manage them at scale - to operators of outfits that use them to commit various scams and crimes, according to an undercover investigation by state television broadcaster China Central Television revealed late last week. The report shows what appear to be chassis filled with 20 smartphone motherboards each, wired to a monitor that displays the screens of all 20 units.

CISA shares critical infrastructure defense tips against Chinese hackers
2024-03-19 20:18

CISA, the NSA, the FBI, and several other agencies in the U.S. and worldwide warned critical infrastructure leaders to protect their systems against the Chinese Volt Typhoon hacking group. Together with the NSA, the FBI, other U.S. government agencies, and partner Five Eyes cybersecurity agencies, including cybersecurity agencies from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, it also issued defense tips on detecting and defending against Volt Typhoon attacks.

Chinese Earth Krahang hackers breach 70 orgs in 23 countries
2024-03-18 20:49

A sophisticated hacking campaign attributed to a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat group known as 'Earth Krahang' has breached 70 organizations and targeted at least 116 across 45 countries. Specifically, the hackers have compromised 48 government organizations, 10 of which are Foreign Affairs ministries, and targeted another 49 government agencies.

Malicious Ads Targeting Chinese Users with Fake Notepad++ and VNote Installers
2024-03-15 06:18

Chinese users looking for legitimate software such as Notepad++ and VNote on search engines like Baidu are being targeted with malicious ads and bogus links to distribute trojanized versions of...

Forget TikTok – Chinese spies want to steal IP by backdooring digital locks
2024-03-14 23:35

In a letter to National Counterintelligence and Security Center director Michael Casey, US senator Ron Wyden urged the White House threat-intel arm to sound the alarm on commercial safes and locks. Most commercially available safes include manufacturer reset codes for their locks to help consumers if they lose or forget the code they set.

Google engineer caught stealing AI tech secrets for Chinese firms
2024-03-07 14:56

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the unsealing of an indictment against Linwei Ding, 38, a former software engineer at Google, suspected of stealing Google AI trade secrets for Chinese companies. The allegedly stolen trade secrets involve crucial technology underpinning Google's advanced supercomputing data centers, which are essential for training and hosting large AI models capable of processing nuanced language and generating intelligent responses.

Chinese State Hackers Target Tibetans with Supply Chain, Watering Hole Attacks
2024-03-07 13:22

The China-linked threat actor known as Evasive Panda orchestrated both watering hole and supply chain attacks targeting Tibetan users at least since September 2023. The end of the attacks is to...

Chinese chap charged with stealing Google’s AI datacenter secrets
2024-03-07 00:37

The US Department of Justice on Wednesday revealed an indictment that charges a former Google employee with leaking the ad giant's AI tech to two Chinese companies - after easily defeating the Big G's security controls. The indictment names Linwei Ding, aka Leon Ding, and states that during his time at Google his job involved "Development of software that allowed GPUs to function efficiently for machine learning, AI applications, or other purposes required by Google or Google Cloud clients."

Chinese 'connected' cars are a national security threat, says Biden
2024-02-29 19:01

Concerned over the chance that Chinese-made cars could pose a future threat to national security, Biden's administration is proposing plans to probe potential threats posed by "Connected" vehicles made in the Middle Kingdom. The US president said he's putting the onus for sussing out the reality of the threat posed by Chinese automobiles on the Department of Commerce, which today said it issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking seeking public comment on the matter.

Chinese Hackers Exploiting Ivanti VPN Flaws to Deploy New Malware
2024-02-29 05:49

At least two different suspected China-linked cyber espionage clusters, tracked as UNC5325 and UNC3886, have been attributed to the exploitation of security flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure VPN...