Chinese security vendor Qihoo 360 says that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has hacked Chinese organizations for the last 11 years, targeting various industry sectors and government agencies.
Qihoo 360 claims in the report that lacks any technical details that "the CIA hacking group (APT-C-39)" has targeted a multitude of Chinese companies between September 2008 and June 2019, with a focus on "aviation organizations, scientific research institutions, petroleum industry, Internet companies, and government agencies."
The Chinese security firm also says that its researchers connected the APT-C-39 hacking campaigns to the CIA based on malware used during the attacks spanning over 11 years, including the Fluxwire backdoor and the Grasshopper malware builder.
Qihoo 360 is not the only security vendor tracking CIA hacking campaigns, with Kaspersky and Symantec also having previously labeled them as Lamberts and Longhorn, respectively.
While Kaspersky researchers have been monitoring CIA hacking activities since 2008 (matching Qihoo 360’s claims), Symantec’s monitoring data goes back to at least 2011 and highlighting 40 compromised targets from roughly 16 countries, across various industry sectors in across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
So we either believe both or neither countries. Certainly there is more substance and detail to the Chinese claim, as far as I’m aware everyone was still waiting for details about the USA claims against China, but hopefully that comes out during the Huawei trial? Certainly seems the USA’s disclosures to their allies did not fully convince them and resulted in a fall-out with the UK government over this. Backdoors feature here again suggesting that having (or not losing) your backdoor on the other side is quite crucial.
See Chinese Security Firm Says CIA Hackers Attacked China Since 2008
Chinese security vendor Qihoo 360 says that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has hacked Chinese organizations for the last 11 years, targeting various industry sectors and government agencies.