China’s state security agency warns of phishing emails sent by foreign spies

China’s top spy agency said foreign agents had sent Chinese military research institutes fake job applications in emails with a Trojan program embedded in them.

In a social media post on Tuesday, the Ministry of State Security said they were among thousands of phishing emails sent by foreign spy agencies in recent years targeting Communist Party and government organs, national defence and military industrial units, as well as universities and research institutes.

The post did not give details of who had been targeted in the recent attack, but said in one case an expert in shipbuilding technology at a well-known Chinese university had received an email from someone claiming to be a postgraduate student, identified as Wang.

The academic, surnamed Yang, described it as a “vague” application to be his research assistant. He asked the student to send a resume, and soon after received a reply with an encrypted Word document titled “Resume” that required a password to open, which was provided in the email.

Yang downloaded and opened the resume but became suspicious when he realised Wang was not a current university student and that his major was not related to Yang’s research field. He asked further questions and the person said they were specifically interested in “vessels and maritime equipment”.

Yang then reported the email to the university’s security department and notified state security authorities.

According to Tuesday’s post, the email was found to be a “double trap” from a foreign intelligence agency – it aimed to use the researcher as a source of information but also included a Trojan program developed by the agency.

South China Morning Post