Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has warned that the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) and other Chinese intelligence agencies are conducting cyber-espionage operations to gather information on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
“It should come as no surprise that CN PLA and other CN intel orgs are acutely interested in the war in Ukraine. Over the last few weeks Google TAG has identified a govt backed actor from CN targeting Ukrainian govt orgs, and we provided notifications to impacted parties,” Billy Leonard, Google TAG security engineer, tweeted.
“While our priority is providing notifications to impacted parties, we've provided related IOCs to community partners, and we will publish more details for the security community in the near future,” he said.
Shane Huntley, the director of Google's TAG, has also confirmed China's involvement.
“The Ukraine war isn’t only attracting interest from European threat actors. China is working hard here too,” he said.
TAG assessment corroborates with claims made by the hacktivist collective group Intrusion Truth, known for outing alleged Chinese government hackers, that Chinese threat actors are conducting cyberattacks on behalf of the country’s government.
“Intrusion Truth now knows that Chinese hackers are conducting cyber attacks against Ukraine. We can only assume these have been ordered, or are at least condoned, by the Chinese state. If they haven't, the CCP has a big problem: hackers getting ahead of CCP foreign policy,” Intrusion Truth said in a tweet.
Earlier this month, China’s CNCERT/CC said that the country has been facing continuous cyberattacks since February involving US internet addresses used to take over Chinese computers to target Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Most of these attacks came from the United States, but some of them were launched from other countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, the agency said.
Cybersecurity Help’s statement on the critical situation in Ukraine
On February 24, people in many cities and towns across Ukraine woke up to the sounds of explosions and artillery fire, as the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of the country. Such actions are unacceptable, political ambitions of any man aren’t worth of blood, tears, and destruction of millions of lives. We give our full support to the Ukrainian people in these hard times. No more war! Слава Україні!