China has been conducting secret mass cyberattacks for a decade

It seems like we’re always hearing about the Chinese hacking one person or another nowadays, but the country’s campaign of cyberattacks isn’t anything new, in fact, a new report from a security firm known as FireEye shows that China has been conducting cyberattacks on its southern neighbors is India and Southeast Asia for a decade. Targets include everything from corporations to government agencies. 

The Chinese government is being blamed for a newly discovered set of cyber attacks waged against government agencies, corporate companies and journalists across India and Southeast Asia for the past ten years. Security firm FireEye released a report today revealing a spate of corporate espionage and cyber spying offenses against targets located in India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Nepal, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and beyond. The group said attacks began in 2005. “There’s no smoking gun that shows this is a Chinese government operation, but all signs point to China” FireEye’s APAC CTO Bryce Boland told TechCrunch in an interview. “There’s huge intellectual property development in Asia — that’s the new battleground.” Boland referenced several pieces of evidence collected by FireEye following “months” of research. In particular, the existence of an operating manual written in Chinese, a code base that was seemingly developed by Chinese developers, and a related domain registered to a suspicious ‘tea company’ in rural China, all imply Chinese involvement.