FireEye, the Chinese internet research firm actively involved in voicing opinions against China’s hardened internet censorship program, has now come up with a new report, which claims of “uninterrupted” cyber spying by Chinese authorities over India and other South East Asian nations.
In a report released on Monday, FireEye said the cyber operations under question dated back to at least 2005 and “focused on targets – government and commercial – who hold key political, economic and military information about the region.”
Bryce Boland, Chief Technology Officer for Asia Pacific at FireEye and co-author of the report, said that the attacks haven’t subsided yet and are fully operation even till today. Boland further said that a number of FireEye’s own customers were under attack an that the servers running such attacks were still fully operational.
The Report further said,
Such a sustained, planned development effort coupled with the (hacking) group’s regional targets and mission, lead us to believe that this activity is state-sponsored – most likely the Chinese government
Though China has been accused of using cyber attacks to compromised sensitive foreign Government information, the communist nation continues to deny any such involvement. In a statement to Reuters, Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said,
I want to stress that the Chinese government resolutely bans and cracks down on any hacking acts. This position is clear and consistent. Hacking attacks are a joint problem faced by the international community and need to be dealt with cooperatively rather than via mutual censure.
If you’ve been following China-related cyber news for some time, you would know this isn’t the first time that the country has been accused of cyber espionage operations. Back in 2011, researchers from McAfee reported a similar campaign dubbed Shady Rat, which attacked Asian governments and institutions, among other targets.
We’ve contacted Indian Government’s Computer Emergency Response team on teh same, and will get back to you once (and if) we receive a response.
