cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/54781520
China-aligned attackers broke into the networks of U.S. and Canadian universities to steal sensitive data and establish persistent access via webshells and backdoors, Proofpoint threat researchers said Tuesday.
The espionage-motivated attacks targeted physics and engineering departments, focusing on administrators and professors with national security links or organizations researching astrophysics and particle physics.
Proofpoint identified less than 10 university victims and estimates a few dozen universities may be impacted, Greg Lesnewich, principal threat researcher at Proofpoint, told CyberScoop. The company first observed the campaign in May and believes the campaign is ongoing.
“There is a high likelihood that many victims have not been made aware of this activity yet,” Lesnewich added.
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The engineering aspects do align with China’s strategic initiatives, he added.
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“China-aligned adversaries have been targeting other types of edge devices such as routers and VPN concentrators for years with various exploits to create a foothold into a target network, not using email for delivery,” Lesnewich said. “This campaign flips that on its head, using email to deliver an exploit chain to compromise a mail server, instead of using email to deliver a credential harvesting URL or malware to target an end user, not a server.”
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The concept of intellectual “property” is asinine.
Scientific knowledge should not be treated as a commodity, leverage, or a privilege.
Greater understanding benefits all of humankind, and it is morally indefensible to gatekeep progress to the benefit of any minority.
It wasn’t explicitly stated what sensitive data was stolen so I’m not sure what you’re on about.
Sensitive data can include personal information as well and there is certainly no altruistic purpose for having such information.
Regardless of whether scientific knowledge should be public information or not there is certainly a better way to obtain this information that does not compromise individuals. I don’t think this sort of behaviour encourages others to enter these fields of research at all.
As stated in the article, historically they are after “…data across academia, medicine, military, cybersecurity and foreign policy”.
I support it.
I also don’t care if they are compromising personal information.
I am far more comfortable with any speculative use China has for this information than I am with the known exploitative intentions that private, for-profit, western institutions have for it.
Again, centuries of history has made me significantly more confident in China’s ability to deploy this knowledge for the greater good and progress of humanity than ANY western nation.
This is, apparently, rubbish. China is illegally hacking into foreign system with malign intention, while at the same time maintaining behind what is called a Great Firewall. The Chinese party-state shows no willingness to share anything or use knowledge in a way that it “benefits all of mankind” (not even its own citizens, btw).
From your comment here and your comment history it is reasonable to assume you are - again - distracting from the Chinese government’s malign intentions by attempting to blame Canada and the West.
China is the world’s largest producer of both total and high-impact scientific literature. Chinese research institutions publish more than 1,000,000 papers annually, which is double what the next most prolific nation publishes.
Looking at the last 20 years specifically, China accounts for a 27% share of the Top 1% most cited papers, with the US coming in 2nd with a ~25% share
When accounting for raw purchasing power, China spends >$1,300,000,000,000 annually on R&D compared to the US at $1,010,000,000,000.
China is home to 24 of the top 100 science and technology clusters, delivering >7,570,000 person-years of R&D manpower annually.
As for their espionage tactics; again I fully reject the position that information and knowledge are property, so I do not see accessing those without permission as theft.
Looking at the raw numbers, and the material outcomes we all benefit from, I have more faith in China’s ability to turn knowledge into meaningful human progress than any other nation on earth.
That might be, but they are right. Knowledge should be free. Intellectual property should be shared. What the CCP does is wrong, but that doesn’t mean the oligarchy in the West are right.
Just stumbled upon this report stating that China is reducing incentives for academics to submit papers to international journals over leak concerns, national security issue,
The national security concerns have become a new factor in Beijing’s long-running campaign … China’s Ministry of State Security last month accused a researcher of leaking “important technical details” while trying to win acceptance of papers by international journals and academic conferences …
China’s science policy has been shifting from emphasis on global collaboration and publication in international journals towards tighter controls on how knowledge is shared overseas. The change comes amid geopolitical tensions and the country’s rapid technological advance …
China’s security ministry in June warned that submissions to international conferences, publications in foreign journals, cross-border academic exchanges and overseas collaborative research must all “strictly” follow the requirements of “review before public disclosure” and “approval before external release” …
One Chinese scholar in materials science said he had stopped submitting research to foreign journals because it had become “difficult” to pass security reviews, which he said were “unclear and insufficiently objective” and part of a process that discouraged overseas publication … [Here is an archived version of the article.]
So, again it is primarily China where knowledge is not free. Your argumentation in this thread can only be interpreted as an attempt to distract from illegal Chinese activities. Nothing what China does is about free knowledge, let alone for the benefit ‘of all of mankind,’ It’s rather the exact opposite.
You see no irony in your “rebuttal” to my point being locked behind a Western paywall?
It seems clear that you’ll continue to avoid real discussion and dismiss my perspective with some conspiracy minded magical thinking regardless of how this “conversation” proceeds…
You’ve made no attempt to rationalize or justify your opposition. You’re using ad hominem attacks to imply the blanket superiority of your moral position without any logical connective tissue. “Someone has a different opinion to me? They must be a Chinese propagandist!”
If you don’t have an actual counter-argument to present, I’m not interested in indulging further.
You’re right, that’s waste of time. The topic here is a suspected Chinese espionage against Canada, we should not continue in this distraction.
You’re right, that’s waste of time. The topic here is a suspected Chinese espionage against Canada, we should not continue in this distraction.
See! Now THAT is how you write a response that reads like propaganda!
