China's Cyber Rampage: Typhoons, Telecoms, and Tingling Spines!

This is your Digital Dragon Watch: Weekly China Cyber Alert podcast.

Welcome back to Digital Dragon Watch: Weekly China Cyber Alert. I’m Ting, your friendly—if slightly paranoid—cyber oracle, ready to break down the recent fireworks in the world of China-related cyber activity. Strap in; this week was anything but dull.

Let’s start with the main event: a fresh surge in China-linked cyber attacks. According to a recent SC Media report, activity has soared by a whopping 150%, with prime targets being financial services, manufacturing, industrial, and media sectors. If you thought your local finance servers were sweating, you’re absolutely right. The attackers’ playbook this week had a bit of everything—from phishing to exploiting overlooked vulnerabilities—which leads us to some especially sneaky new attack vectors.

Speaking of vectors, remember the infamous Volt Typhoon campaign? Turns out, China finally, if cryptically, admitted to being behind those attacks during a confidential US-China meeting in Geneva last December. The message was clear enough for US officials: Volt Typhoon’s blitz on critical infrastructure—including energy, manufacturing, transportation, and IT—wasn’t just a data grab, but also a bit of digital saber-rattling, especially in light of US support for Taiwan. What’s truly spine-tingling is the revelation that these actors camped out in the US electric grid for 300 days last year, using zero-day exploits to stay hidden and prepared to cause havoc if needed.

Switching gears, Salt Typhoon, aka RedMike, has been on a rampage too. Their latest joyride? Hacking into five global telecom giants—including two in the US—by targeting Cisco edge devices. The trick? Exploiting unpatched privilege escalation flaws, CVE-2023-20198 and CVE-2023-20273, to gain root access and set up shop. Their reach didn’t stop at telecoms; universities like UCLA, Loyola Marymount, and Utah Tech got a taste too. If your campus wi-fi is sluggish, maybe it’s not just midterms.

The US government’s response? Heightened alerts, patch advisories, and public warnings about the Volt Typhoon threat to critical sectors. Federal agencies are urging organizations to patch edge devices, enable multi-factor authentication, and monitor for abnormal traffic, especially on systems controlling infrastructure.

Expert recommendations this week are classic but crucial: patch everything yesterday, monitor privileged access like your life depends on it (because, sometimes, it does), and educate staff to spot phishing and social engineering attempts. And for telecoms and critical infrastructure? Consider adding anomaly detection and network segmentation—it’s no longer just best practice; it’s survival.

So, as we roll into next week, remember: the dragons aren’t slowing down. I’m Ting, and I’ll be here, watching the digital skies so you don’t have to—until next week’s Digital Dragon Watch, stay patched and stay paranoid!

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