Purported Leaks Show Global Reach of China-Sponsored Hacking
- Cybersecurity firm Mandiant believes the data dump authentic
- US and China have clashed over state-sponsored cyberattacks
A huge trove of documents on GitHub appeared to outline in extraordinary detail the scope of China’s state-sponsored cyberattacks on foreign governments, transfixing the global security community.
Hundreds of internal files attributed to the Shanghai-based cybersecurity vendor I-Soon, which works with Chinese government clients, were posted to the developers’ community owned by Microsoft Corp. this week. The documents, which industry experts believe to be authentic, appeared to reveal successful attacks on a series of high-value government targets in 2021 and 2022 from the UK foreign office to the Royal Thai Army and even NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, according to a review by Bloomberg News. Offices for the alleged targets didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.