AccessData Comments on US Indictment of Chinese Officials

accessdataDigital forensics and cyber incident resolution technology vendor, AccessData, has commented on the US Department of Justice’s historic indictment of five officials from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, on charges of cyber espionage and stealing US corporate intellectual property.

Lucas Zaichkowsky, Enterprise Defence Architect at AccessData has commented in his blog: “The unfolding of these major charges signals a new era of highly public, government-versus-government allegations.”

“Last year Mandiant released a report focusing on the same Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) unit. It’s important to understand that Unit 61398 is just one of a few dozen Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) state sponsored hacking groups. A few highly advanced hacking groups are assigned to breach organizations with bleeding edge defensive capabilities. These advanced groups invest immense effort evading security teams by using different backdoors and hacking tools each time they’re deployed to a system. Even their command and control (C2) infrastructure is rarely reused. To make matters worse, they implement anti-forensic techniques to make it difficult for security teams and incident responders to successfully remediate.”

Zaichkowsky also comments on the implications for compliance with mandatory disclosure of serious data breaches, proposed within the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

“Without laws that require disclosure of espionage activity, only the occasional victimized organization will voluntarily come forward, as we saw in the Aurora incident.”
In 2010, Google announced that it had been targeted by a sophisticated cyber espionage operation, which had stolen intellectual property. Following this disclosure, Rackspace, Adobe and Juniper Systems also revealed that they had been attacked by the same operation, which was linked to hackers in China. McAfee dubbed the attacks, ‘Operation Aurora’ after investigating the malware employed.

References:

BBC, 20th May 2014, “China denounces US cyber-theft charges” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27477601

Infosec Insight: Lucas Zaichkowsky blog: “Insight into the US charges of Chinese cyberattacks,” http://www.infosecinsight.com/author/lzaichkowsky

Mandiant: “APT1: Exposing one of China’s cyber espionage units.” http://intelreport.mandiant.com/

EU GDPR: 12th March 2014, “Progress on EU data protection reform now irreversible following European Parliament vote”. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-14-186_en.htm

Wikipedia: entry on Operation Aurora, a cyber attack on Google’s intellectual property discovered in 2010, which was linked to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and investigated by McAfee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora

Computer Weekly: Security Think Tank: What should UK businesses do to prepare for EU GDPR?
http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Security-Think-Tank-What-should-UK-business-do-to-prepare-for-new-EU-data-protection-rules-part1

Computer Weekly: Essential Guide: “What the EU General Data Protection Regulation mean to you.” http://www.computerweekly.com/guides/Essential-guide-What-the-EU-Data-Protection-Regulation-changes-mean-to-you
 

About Security Buyer

Security Buyer is the leading authority in global security content, delivering expert news, in-depth articles, exclusive interviews, and industry insights across print, digital, and event platforms. Published 10 times a year, the magazine is a trusted resource for professionals seeking updates and analysis on the latest developments in the security sector.

To submit an article, or for sponsorship opportunities, please contact our team below.

Rebecca Spayne picture 2025

Rebecca Spayne

Managing
EDITOR

Georgina Turner image

Georgina Turner

Sales
Manager

Afua Akoto image - Security Buyer

Afua Akoto

Marketing Manager

Read the Latest Issue

Follow us on X

Follow us on X

Click Here

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on LinkedIn

Click Here

Advertise here

Reach decision makers and amplify your marketing

Advertise here

Click Here

Related News

John Bentley

AccessData Empowers Middle East Organisations at Gitex 2014

AccessData has announced that it will be exhibiting ResolutionOne™ Platform at HP’s booth CLD-7 at Gitex Technology Week, 12-16 October, 2014.
Paul Wright

AccessData Revealing ResolutionOne™ Platform at GISEC 2014

AccessData educates conference attendees on advanced digital forensics and incident response strategies following a cyberattack or data investigation.
Scroll to Top