The United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued warning to all public and privately funded companies that they should be highly vigilant against hackers working for Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS).
CISA in association with the US Department of Justice said that some state-funded actors belonging to the Chinese Military Intelligence were targeting open source information made available by the US Government Agencies through backdoors like China Chopper, Mimikatz and threat emulation software such as Cobalt Strike.
“Since, one year, all such attacks are being carried out by exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Email Servers, Citrix, and Pulse Secure VPN appliances along with F5 Big IP Load Balancers”, says a spokesperson from CISA on Tuesday.
And the best advice to thwart such cyber attacks is to keep the software and security patches up to date, says CISA advisory.
“Often misconfiguration and unsecured software allow hackers to execute cyber attacks. And if this misconfiguration can be tracked down and patched on time, most of the exploits can be blocked”, says Matthew Hayden, working as a freelance Cybersecurity associate with CISA.
According to a report released by US Department of Justice, MSS affiliated actors have already hit many firms operating across the United States and in countries like Canada, Australia and Britain and that includes those involved in the manufacturing of medical devices, civil and industrial engineering, automobile business, education, gaming and solar energy along with the Pharmaceutical industry which is now busy in finding a vaccine for the COVID 19 Pandemic spread.
