Tag: Cyberwarfare and Defense

Microsoft Seizes 42 Websites From a Chinese Hacking Group

Chin@Strategy

Microsoft said on Monday that it had seized 42 websites from a Chinese hacking group in an effort to disrupt the group’s intelligence-gathering operations. The company said in a news release that a federal court in Virginia had granted Microsoft’s request to allow its Digital Crimes Unit to take over the U.S.-based websites, which were being run by a hacker group known as Nickel or APT15. The company is redirecting the websites’ traffic to secure Microsoft servers to “help us protect existing and future victims while learning more about Nickel’s…

Washington Hears Echoes of the ’50s and Worries: Is This a Cold War With China?

Chin@Strategy

The White House is loath to put a label on this multilayered approach, which may explain why Mr. Biden has yet to give a speech laying it out in any detail. But his actions so far look increasingly like those in a world of competitive coexistence, a bit edgier than the “peaceful coexistence” that the Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev used to characterize the old Cold War. (Interestingly, after meeting this month in Switzerland with Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, China’s top diplomat said he objected to any…

Biden Speaks With Xi Amid Low Point in U.S.-China Relations

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — In their first conversation in seven months, President Biden spoke on Thursday with President Xi Jinping of China, expressing concern over China’s cyberactivities while arguing that the leaders of the world’s two largest economies could set aside their differences to work together on climate change. The call amounted to a break in what experts have called one of the lowest points in the relationship between the two countries in decades. It was only the second time that the leaders have spoken since Mr. Biden’s inauguration; the lack of…

In Afghan Withdrawal, a Biden Doctrine Surfaces

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — In the chaotic finale of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, a Biden Doctrine is emerging: a foreign policy that avoids the aggressive tactics of forever wars and nation building, while uniting allies against the authoritarianism of rising powers. President Biden began to define this doctrine on Tuesday when he declared the end of “an era of major military operations to remake other countries,” offering what he said was a better way to protect American interests around the world through diplomacy, the military’s targeted antiterrorism abilities and forceful action…

Spies for Hire: China’s New Breed of Hackers Blends Espionage and Entrepreneurship

Chin@Strategy

One posting from Hainan Xiandun stood out. The ad, on a Sichuan University computer science hiring board from 2018, boasted that Xiandun had “received a considerable number of government-secret-related business.” The company, based in Hainan’s capital, Haikou, paid monthly salaries of $1,200 to $3,000 — solid middle-class wages for Chinese tech workers fresh out of college — with bonuses as high as $15,000. Xiandun’s ads listed an email address used by other firms looking for cybersecurity experts and linguists, suggesting they were part of a network. Chinese hacking groups are…