cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/54781520
China-aligned attackers broke into the networks of U.S. and Canadian universities to steal sensitive data and establish persistent access via webshells and backdoors, Proofpoint threat researchers said Tuesday.
The espionage-motivated attacks targeted physics and engineering departments, focusing on administrators and professors with national security links or organizations researching astrophysics and particle physics.
Proofpoint identified less than 10 university victims and estimates a few dozen universities may be impacted, Greg Lesnewich, principal threat researcher at Proofpoint, told CyberScoop. The company first observed the campaign in May and believes the campaign is ongoing.
“There is a high likelihood that many victims have not been made aware of this activity yet,” Lesnewich added.
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The engineering aspects do align with China’s strategic initiatives, he added.
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“China-aligned adversaries have been targeting other types of edge devices such as routers and VPN concentrators for years with various exploits to create a foothold into a target network, not using email for delivery,” Lesnewich said. “This campaign flips that on its head, using email to deliver an exploit chain to compromise a mail server, instead of using email to deliver a credential harvesting URL or malware to target an end user, not a server.”
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It wasn’t explicitly stated what sensitive data was stolen so I’m not sure what you’re on about.
Sensitive data can include personal information as well and there is certainly no altruistic purpose for having such information.
Regardless of whether scientific knowledge should be public information or not there is certainly a better way to obtain this information that does not compromise individuals. I don’t think this sort of behaviour encourages others to enter these fields of research at all.
As stated in the article, historically they are after “…data across academia, medicine, military, cybersecurity and foreign policy”.
I support it.
I also don’t care if they are compromising personal information.
I am far more comfortable with any speculative use China has for this information than I am with the known exploitative intentions that private, for-profit, western institutions have for it.
Again, centuries of history has made me significantly more confident in China’s ability to deploy this knowledge for the greater good and progress of humanity than ANY western nation.