“The U.S. is absolutely facing the most serious Chinese hacking ever. We are in China’s golden age of hacking,” said China expert Dakota Cary of security firm SentinelOne.
Although China’s various hacking campaigns appear to be led by different agencies with different goals, all benefit from evolving techniques and Beijing’s shift toward a less constrained system for cyber offense, officials and outside researchers told The Washington Post.
Chinese intelligence, military and security agencies previously selected targets and used their own employees to carry out intrusions. But officials said the Chinese government has embraced a more aggressive approach, allowing private contractors to launch cyberattacks on their own.
These companies recruit elite hackers who discover previously unknown, or “zero-day,” vulnerabilities in widely used U.S. software. They then search for where the programs are installed, breach as many as possible and sell access to multiple Chinese government agencies and security firms.