In recent years, Chinese government-backed hacking groups have made significant inroads into sensitive US infrastructure, posing a serious threat to national security. This has been highlighted in three reports released over the past week. Security firm Kaspersky detailed a suite of advanced spying tools used by one group, known as Zirconium, to establish a “permanent channel for data exfiltration” within industrial infrastructure. Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that another group had hidden malware within critical infrastructure used by US military bases globally. This followed Microsoft’s revelation of a breach impacting 25 of its cloud customers, including the Departments of State and Commerce.
These operations seem to originate from different Chinese government departments, each targeting distinct parts of US and European infrastructure. Zirconium’s primary goal is data theft, while the second group, Volt Typhoon, aims to gain long-term disruptive capabilities within US bases, potentially for use in armed conflict scenarios. Both groups are striving to create permanent footholds for clandestine operations.
Zirconium, also known as APT31 and Judgement Panda, is an advanced persistent threat (APT) that traditionally targets a wide range of sectors, including government, financial, aerospace, defense, technology, construction, engineering, telecommunications, media, and insurance. Kaspersky’s report detailed 15 implants providing Zirconium with a range of advanced capabilities, from persistent remote access to data theft from air-gapped devices, and data upload to Zirconium-controlled servers. The group’s sophisticated evasion techniques include payload concealment in encrypted binary data files and malicious code embedding in legitimate applications.
Source: Ars Technica
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