Wars without Gun Smoke: China Plays the Cyber Name-and-Shame Game on Taiwan and the U.S.
China’s security services have called out hackers of an alleged “Internet Army of Taiwan Independence” and of the U.S. National Security Agency, signaling an increasingly confrontational approach
On March 13, 2025, Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te declared that China was a “foreign hostile force” exploiting Taiwan’s freedoms to “divide, destroy, and subvert us from within” and introduced 17 major strategies to respond to threats from China against Taiwan. Four days later, on March 17, 2025, the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), posting on its public account on Chinese messaging app WeChat, named four Taiwan citizens who allegedly are members of Taiwan’s Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM, 國防部资通电軍指揮部)1 “linked to ‘Taiwan independence forces’.” On the same day, three Chinese information security companies, Qi An Xin, Antiy, and DBAPPSecurity (a.k.a. Anheng Information), simultaneously published reports on alleged Taiwan-linked APT group PoisonVine (毒云藤)2 (a.k.a APT-C-01, GreenSpot (绿斑), APT-Q-20). Evidently, this was a coordinated action led by the MSS.
Nearly a month later, on April 15, 2025, the Harbin Public Security Bureau—a regional office…
