China as a Target of Cyberattacks: What China Says About Who Are in Their Systems

Whether you view China as an adversary, a competitor, or a business partner, it is beneficial to understand China’s own perspectives.

Recent reports from the New York Times, Moscow-based multinational cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, and Microsoft have depicted multiple Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) groups targeting critical military, government and industrial infrastructure to “establish a permanent channel for data exfiltration”, using sophisticated techniques such as  forging tokens for authenticating enterprise accounts.  As Chinese APT groups - a term that usually refers to nation state-backed hackers - are keeping defenders busy, foreign APT groups also target China. Qi AN Xin (奇安信)(QAX), a top information security company in China with ties to the Chinese government, published its 2023 Mid-year Global APT Report (全球高级持续性威胁(APT)2023年中报告) in Chinese in July. The QAX report used data from QAX’s own Threat Intelligence Center (TIC) and from 177 publicly available APT reports. The report enumerates the top APT groups QAX has seen targeting Chinese organizations during the first six months of 2023, as well …