![]() ![]() “We firmly oppose and combat cyberattacks of any kind,” Chinese Embassy in Washington spokesperson Liu Pengyu said in an email. That hacking group, according to a US indictment unsealed in September 2020, has been linked to attempts to breach hundreds of organizations around the world, from hardware makers to pro-democracy politicians in Hong Kong. Mandiant blamed the hacking campaign on a group that the Justice Department has linked with China’s civilian intelligence agency. “We encourage all organizations and critical infrastructure entities impacted by cyber intrusions to report to CISA, and to visit to take action to protect themselves.” “CISA is actively working with our JCDC private sector partners, including Mandiant, and government partners to address this advanced persistent threat to state government agencies and assist impacted entities,” a CISA spokesperson said. The hackers have used multiple methods to access the state agency networks, and in some cases have returned to the same compromised network after Mandiant specialists contained the activity. ![]() ![]() probably haven’t completed their mission,” said Rufus Brown, senior threat analyst at Mandiant’s Advanced Practices team. While the hackers’ ultimate objectives are unclear, state agencies could provide a wealth of useful information to foreign spies, whether data related to elections or government contracting. Mandiant declined to name the US states or agencies affected. In one state, Mandiant said, the hackers accessed personal data on some Americans, including names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers. Agencies in four other states were hacked via other means. Within hours of the CISA advisory, the Chinese hackers had begun using the Log4J flaw to break into the two US state agencies, according to Mandiant. ![]() For weeks, US officials urged companies to update their software the White House hosted a meeting in January with tech executives to try to address the root problem of software that is not secure by design. Hundreds of millions of computers around the world ran the vulnerable software, US officials later estimated. The list of state agencies affected by the hacking could grow as the investigation continues.ĬISA on December 10 publicly warned that Log4J - software used by big tech firms around the world - had a vulnerability that hackers could easily exploit to gain further access to computer systems. The hackers’ motives aren’t clear, but their victims are “consistent with an espionage operation,” the firm said. And it’s a reminder that as many analysts are watching for Russian cyber threats during the Ukraine war, other foreign governments aren’t letting up in targeting US networks. The revelation shows how difficult it can be to keep state-backed hackers from accessing US networks - even when US officials are sounding the alarm about a potential threat. The wide range of state agencies targeted include “health, transportation, labor (including unemployment benefit systems), higher education, agriculture, and court networks and systems,” the FBI and US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a separate, private advisory to state governments obtained by CNN.įor agencies in two states, the hackers broke into networks using a critical software flaw that was revealed in December just as the Biden administration was scrambling to respond to the flaw’s discovery, according to Mandiant. This is done to prevent tampering with the source material.A Chinese government-backed hacking group has breached local government agencies in at least six US states in the last 10 months as part of a persistent information-gathering operation, investigators at cybersecurity firm Mandiant said Tuesday. This is a common practice within government agencies, especially those dealing with sensitive information and with certain legal documents that need to protect certain information but need to reveal other information in the same document. Rather than editing the source file, it is the printed copies that go to non-privileged individuals that get redacted, i.e., the information that the said individuals are not privy to is simply blacked out so as to become illegible. An example is when a certain legal document needs to be distributed to people but not all of them have the right or privilege to view certain information contained in the document, and it must be kept intact for those who do. Redaction is often done on physical printed documents and not on the source files, so it becomes more like a post edit. Today, that meaning still holds true in a sense, but in a more "edit out," obscure or remove kind of way. Redaction originally meant to literally edit and make ready for publication, at least as evidenced by its usage in the early 15th century. ![]()
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