Beijing's Cyber Spies Unleashed: Cloud Carnage, Telecom Trickery, and Open-Source Sneak Attacks

This is your Cyber Sentinel: Beijing Watch podcast.

This is Ting on your Cyber Sentinel: Beijing Watch, and trust me, the wires have been crackling with activity this week! Let’s get right into what China’s cyber operators have been up to, because things have escalated on both the tactical and strategic fronts faster than you can say “zero day.”

Cloud environments are under siege, and it’s not hyperbole. According to CrowdStrike’s latest Threat Hunting Report, we’ve seen a 136% spike in cloud intrusions over 2024, with Chinese state-backed actors like Genesis Panda and Murky Panda at the forefront. Now, Genesis Panda isn’t just another cool codename — this group is specializing in exploiting vulnerabilities on web-facing clouds, laying the groundwork for more sophisticated espionage. Murky Panda, meanwhile, is getting real cozy with supply chains, targeting not just the main firm but their partners, then hopping cloud tenants like it’s a relay race. The ultimate goal: persistent access, data gathering, and quietly infiltrating the intricate webs tying together US tech, finance, and government sectors.

On the methodology front, these actors are moving past the old noisy malware. It’s now about exploiting misconfigurations in cloud platforms, crafting bespoke attack chains, and—get this—using trusted relationships between organizations to worm access through admin privileges. You know that proverbial weakest link? It’s usually your third-party integration.

Biggest calamity of late: the Salt Typhoon incident. In late 2024, Chinese hackers breached US telecom networks, compromising sensitive data from senior campaign figures spanning both the Trump and Harris camps, all by targeting weaknesses mandated by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. These wiretap-enabled switches became a golden ticket not just to voice and texts, but entire wiretap target databases—so now, Beijing knows which of its spies (and even Russians, Iranians, and North Koreans) we’ve unmasked. Dr. Susan Landau compared the breach to “a Kim Philby catastrophe”—let’s just say it’s a spymaster’s worst-case scenario.

International response has taken an interesting twist. For maybe the first time ever, the FBI is championing end-to-end encryption, joining Australia, Canada, and New Zealand in advocating for hardening communications. Meanwhile, the UK is doubling down on its regulation approach, betting on technical capability notices instead.

Attribution is now a two-way street. China, fresh off accusations from Washington, has started pointing fingers back, reportedly naming the US as the culprit behind intrusions targeting its own military tech via Microsoft zero-days and similar exploits, according to CyberScoop. The game of cyber blame-and-respond is in full swing.

Tactically, Chinese operators are also making power moves in open-source software. Strider Technologies revealed that state-affiliated hackers are embedding backdoors in foundational open-source code, leveraging the ecosystem’s trust model. This could mean exposure not just for tech giants, but for anyone running the same public code modules.

Strategically, the implications are enormous: supply-chain risk is the new normal, with cloud, telecom, and software infrastructure all in the crosshairs. The arms race over AI-driven vulnerability patching is intensifying too, with DARPA sprinting to automate patching as fast as adversaries can find flaws.

Recommended measures? Double down on zero trust architecture, audit every cloud integration, deploy end-to-end encryption, and educate teams on supply chain hygiene. It’s open season not just for what you own but for the companies and tools you depend on.

That’s your Cyber Sentinel: Beijing Watch for this week. Subscribe, keep your patches current, and remember: the real perimeter is people, not just code. Thanks for tuning in—this...