Chinese Hackers Target Japan & EU

Uploaded on 2024-11-19 in FREE TO VIEW

The Chinese threat actor known as MirrorFace has been seen targeting a diplomatic organisation in the European Union, marking the first time the hacking crew has targeted an entity outside the Asian region.

The leading Slovak cyber security company ESET described the event, saying that this is an expansion in the threat group’s range of targets which have historically been restricted to target organisations in Japan.

Although the identity of the target diplomatic organisation wasn’t disclosed, the lure document was attached to a spear-phishing email with a Japanese theme, encouraging the target to download a document promoting an EXPO Exhibition in Japan in 2025.

Attacks on Japanese organisation by Chinese threat groups has benn increasing and ESET note that, even considering this new EU targeting, "MirrorFace remains focused on Japan and events related to it.”

Earlier this year Japanese security agencies reported an expansion in activities linked to MirrorFace. While the hackers focused initially on gaining access to media, political organisations, think-tanks and universities in Japan, they were also including manufacturers and research institutions. In August, Japan’s national cyber security agency (NISC) disclosed that had itself been hacked, with the attackers potentially accessing sensitive data for nine months before being discovered.

Japan has not publicly attributed the incident to a specific threat actor, however, a report by the Financial Times names three government and private sector sources familiar with the situation, saying that state-backed Chinese hackers were suspected of being behind the attack.

This follows a report by the Washington Post that the US National Security Agency discovered Chinese military hackers had damagingly compromised Japan’s defence networks in 2020.

Image: Ideogram

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