China is Rehearsing Cyber Attacks-Exposed

That China plans on launching cyber attacks against its neighbors is not news. That they got caught at it is. That the tools, tactics and procedures are now known to western defenders is not good news for China.

Here is what was found.

A cache of leaked technical documents, including source code, training information and software assets gives us a rare fully-documented look inside the Chinese “cyber army”; that group of hundreds of thousands that go to work every day with the sole purpose of causing chaos around the world.

The leaked information describes a platform called “Expedition Cloud”, which is a virtual world designed to train Chinese attackers on replicas of real networks. of other countries. While the stolen information targeted countries near the South China Sea and Indochina, we should assume more of these virtual worlds exist targeting places like the United States, EU and the UK.

The scary part is the targets are POWER, ENERGY TRANSMISSION and TRANSPORTATION. It also includes the really poorly protected smart home networks. Of course, China denies this, but we have the actual proof.

The system’s design indicates they are using artificial intelligence in designing and implementing these attacks.

The attack is focused on OFFFENSIVE cyber, not DEFENSIVE cyber.

One more time, a careless user seems to be the source of the win for the good folks and loss for China. The data was found on an unprotected FTP server that collected data from a personal device of one of Expedition Cloud’s developers whose system was infected with malware.

There is more information on what was found and what the implications are at the link. Credit: The Record

by