Malicious software led to Chinese army management servers.
According to British journalists, a number of cyberattacks on Ukraine's military and energy infrastructure just before Russia's attack on Ukraine on February 24 were carried out by Chinese government hackers. This was reported by The Times with reference to internal documents of the SBU.
Journalists call the SBU official, who did not allow his identity to be revealed, a source of information. He handed over to journalists reports for domestic use, which were most likely made by intelligence from other countries.
According to the information in these documents, the Chinese government has been involved in a number of powerful cyberattacks on more than 600 web resources related to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and other authorities. Cyber-attacks began on February 20, and the biggest “strike” was carried out on February 23 just before the start of the war.
The goals of Chinese hackers were to steal or destroy digital data from various facilities in Ukraine: the State Border Service, the National Security and Defense Council and the Ministry of Defense, the National Bank, the Ministry of Finance, Gosatomregulirovaniya and Ukrzaliznytsia.
The attack on the sites of the State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine is significant. They have withstood more than a thousand cyberattacks that have tried to exploit 20 different vulnerabilities in the digital infrastructure.
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A source in The Times in Ukraine assured reporters that the cyberattacks were carried out by China – the methods and mechanisms were exactly those used by hackers of the People's Liberation Army of China.
Sources in the US intelligence service confirmed the SBU's information that Chinese hackers were behind the cyberattacks.
A spokesman for the United Kingdom Government told reporters that “the National Cybersecurity Center is investigating this data together with our international partners.”
The authors of the article emphasize that this may be a sign of the Chinese government's direct involvement in Russia's military aggression against Ukraine. In addition, it confirms the assumption that China was informed of the Kremlin's intentions for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and actively promoted the implementation of Russia's plans.
The cybersecurity experts interviewed by the authors confirm that these attempts look suspicious, that hackers need to understand what military operations are planned in the coming days. According to Tom Hegel, a researcher at the American cyber threat company Sentinel, these attacks were coordinated in order to obtain the information they needed as soon as possible, before the full-scale invasion of Russian troops, probably on February 24.
Read also: Russian hackers attacked NATO servers and several Eastern European countries
Independent experts from British and American think tanks have confirmed that Chinese hackers work on the orders of the Chinese government, not on their own. Sentinel confirms that the methods of attacks and hacking attempts use software and servers belonging to Chinese centers.
Hegel noted that on March 22 there was a small series of cyberattacks on Ukraine's digital infrastructure. He was able to track where the malware used by the Chinese was leading and saw that it pointed to the Chinese army's control servers.
Separately, experts noted that Ukrainian systems can withstand the load and mostly none of the cyberattacks was successful. Juan Andres Guerrero-Saades, head of research at Sentinel, believes that the successful protection of Ukrainian systems is due to either the help of US government cyber experts or additional hidden servers.
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