Since the beginning of 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the country’s cybersecurity companies have increasingly denounced alleged US cyber espionage. According to several geopolitical experts, this initiative could constitute a strategic change for Beijingwhich strives to consolidate its position as a technological superpower.
For the first time, China accuses the United States of cyber espionage
The US government has been doing the same thing for at least a decade. Successive governments have regularly accused China of cyber espionage. Several studies have shown that Chinese hackers would have stolen terabytes of data to companies such as pharmaceutical companies and video game companies. Washington also accuses China of compromising servers and hijacking hacking software. Several Chinese hackers have also been indicted over the past ten years.
Conti’s cybercriminals have prepared a spectacular end of service
The start of 2022 is marked by a turning point in the relationship between the United States and China. For the first time, Beijing accuses US of cyber espionage. Very rare allegations so far. However, these accusations surprise experts because they are based on technical details that are several years old, which are already known to the public and which do not presumably contain new information. For Che Chang, a cyber threat analyst at Taiwan-based cybersecurity firm TeamT5, “It’s a useful strategy for China’s propaganda campaigns”.
A strategic change for Beijing?
Indeed, this is the opinion shared by many researchers who believe that this new Beijing strategy could enable it to face the various accusations of cyber-espionage made by the United States. China’s accusations all follow a very similar pattern. First alert: On February 23, Chinese security firm Pangu Lab published allegations that elite hackers from the Equation Group (a team that works for the CIA) used a backdoor, dubbed Bvp47, to monitor 45 countries .
A few weeks later, the GlobalTimes, a newspaper that is part of China’s state-controlled media, published an exclusive report on this hack. In the process, the same newspaper published a second exclusive article on another NSA tool: Nopen. The latter was reportedly discovered by China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center. He is however known to the whole world since the WikiLeaks revelations in 2009. Publications are usually accompanied by official statements from Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In particular, he stated that “China is gravely concerned about the malicious and irresponsible actions of the US government. We demand an explanation from Washington and want these malicious activities to stop immediately.”. However, neither Pangu Labs nor Qihoo 360, two companies that have been on the US government’s sanctions list since 2020, did not respond to requests for comment on their research or their methodology. A Pangu spokesperson simply said it took “a lot of time to analyze the data”.