China Joins the Name-and-Shame Game

In a new twist, multiple Chinese government agencies are taking the lead in loudly attributing malicious cyber activity to US cyber-spies.

Among the various high-profile activities at China’s annual Cybersecurity Week this year, the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC), a “national cyber defense agency of China” and Qihoo 360, one of China’s top cybersecurity companies, claimed to have identified the “true identity” of the US National Security Agency (NSA) personnel responsible for launching a cyberattack against Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), a leading Chinese aviation university, when the NPU reported the incident in June 2022, according to Chinese state media outlet Global Times. Global Times cited “relevant sources” who said the real identities of these individuals “will be disclosed through the media in due course.” The CVERC and Qihoo 360 allegedly extracted “multiple samples of the spyware named SecondDate” which was used in the attack and described some of the functionalities of the SecondDate spyware. The report cited “relevant sources” as stating that the investigation involve…