Chinese Hackers

[kyonides]

Chinese government-backed hackers
infiltrated US pipeline companies, FBI says

State-sponsored Chinese cybercriminals successfully hacked into the control systems of several U.S. oil and natural gas pipelines between December 2011 to 2013, a Wednesday alert from the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber outfit and the FBI reveals.

The spearphishing activity appears to have started in late December 2011. From December 9, 2011, through at least February 29, 2012, ONG organizations received spearphishing emails specifically targeting their employees. The emails were at constructed with a high level of sophistication to convince employees to view malicious files.

In addition to spearphishing, CISA and the FBI were made aware of social engineering attempts by malicious actors believed to be associated with this campaign. The apparent goal was to gain sensitive information from asset owners. One asset owner reported that individuals in their network engineering department, including managers, received multiple phone calls requesting information about their recent network security practices. Other employees in other departments were not targeted. The asset owner also reported that these calls began immediately after they had identified and removed the malicious intruder from their network and performed a system-wide credential reset. The caller identified himself as an employee of a large computer security firm performing a national survey about network cybersecurity practices. He inquired about the organization’s policy and practices for firewall use and settings, types of software used to protect their network, and the use and type of intrusion detection and/or prevention systems. The caller was blocking his caller ID and when the targeted organization tried to return the call, they reached a number that was not in service.

Be careful, guys!
Thieves like our friend here  are always looking for gullible people they can easily fool in order to retrieve as much information as possible. And it always will cost you a lot!

Chinese spies are exploiting routers to try hacking French targets

France’s national cybersecurity agency said on Wednesday that it is contending with a massive campaign by Chinese state-backed hackers targeting French organizations through compromised routers.
The Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems), or ANSSI, released forensic information to help French entities to recognize if they had been compromised. The alert did not specify which industries or specific organizations were targets.
ANSSI said the APT31 group, sometimes known as Zirconium or Judgment Panda, carried out the reconnaissance. The group’s prior targets include Finland’s parliament, according to a June allegation from the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service, and the presidential campaign of then-contender Joe Biden in 2020, according to Google’s Threat Analysis Group.

They claim the hacking campaign is still in progress.