Secretary of State Antony Blinken travels to China this weekend on a long-awaited trip to possibly smooth the waters between the two countries. The high-stakes visit just got more complicated, however, with word that hackers backed by the Chinese government have attacked computer networks worldwide.
According to Mandiant, a cyber intelligence arm of Google, the hack targeted tens of thousands of computers, about a third of them within government agencies.
After Mandiant’s initial investigation, they report the hackers were, “engaged in espionage activity in support of the People’s Republic of China.”
“We are not really paying enough attention, I think, to the Chinese encroachment upon the West in terms of its cyber infiltration and ultimately ex-filtration of data,” warned Scott White, director of the Cyber Security Program at George Washington University.
This latest effort targeted Barracuda Networks, a data protection service. White sees China playing the long game. That includes stealing data from private citizens, corporations, and governments with the overall goal being to eventually link the captured information.
“It’s only through artificial intelligence we’re going to be able to take millions and millions of pieces of data and begin to put together pieces and construct the puzzle, and that puzzle will be information for the Chinese to use, not only against its own citizens, perhaps against our citizens as well,” White said.
The Barracuda breach began as a phishing email that eventually gained access to data in 16 different countries across public and private sectors, including foreign ministries.
“I don’t see the Chinese stopping this. They’re incredibly imperialistic right now. They don’t seem to care what the West thinks and they’re engaging in these attacks, quite frankly, at a very constant and increasingly rapid rate,” White told CBN News.
As news spreads of this latest cyber attack, Blinken is headed to China. The White House says the goal of the trip is to ease provocation and manage international competition before it turns into conflict.
“China will continue to be around and a major player on the world stage as we are putting ourselves on that stronger footing to compete,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a recent briefing.
Meanwhile, China isn’t the only adversary pursuing data from the West. The Energy Department announced this week that a Russian ransomware group gained access to several federal agencies. Jen Easterly, director of the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), says the hackers do not appear to have focused on any high-value information. That investigation is also ongoing.
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