Cyber Scandal: China Hacks UK Gas, US Solar at Risk, Beijing Tightens Grip!

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

Hey, cyber enthusiasts! Ting here with your Digital Dragon Watch: Weekly China Cyber Alert. Buckle up, because this week in cyber-land has been an absolute rollercoaster, and all eyes are eastward toward China’s latest moves in the digital realm.

Let’s dive right into the big story making waves: the ongoing exploitation of SAP NetWeaver by China-linked advanced persistent threat groups. Researchers over at EclecticIQ dropped a bombshell report documenting how multiple Chinese nation-state actors — notably clusters like UNC5221, UNC5174, and the infamous CL-STA-0048 — have been going after critical infrastructure worldwide. Their weapon of choice? The just-disclosed CVE-2025-31324, a nasty unauthenticated file upload vulnerability that lets attackers execute arbitrary code remotely. In other words, if your SAP NetWeaver instance isn’t patched, you’re basically handing out the keys to your kingdom.

Targets this week were as high-stakes as it gets: natural gas distribution in the UK, water and waste utilities, medical device manufacturing, oil and gas operations in the US, and even government ministries in Saudi Arabia. The digital fingerprints tie right back to attacker infrastructure — one IP in particular, 15.204.56.106, was hosting a treasure trove of logs showing event after event of successful compromise. How did the researchers catch on? The attackers left an “opendir” on their server, exposing log files and Nuclei scan results for anyone to snoop. Oops. Rookie mistake, or honeypot? Either way, EclecticIQ’s Arda Büyükkaya and team pounced.

And the US is not watching idly. This week, federal energy sector regulators began actively investigating Chinese-manufactured inverters — those devices that convert solar energy for grid use — for suspicious embedded communication components. With essential power infrastructure potentially at risk, there’s heightened scrutiny on every supply chain link and firmware update.

Meanwhile, in the regulatory universe, China is also busy on its home front. The latest draft amendments to China’s Cybersecurity Law have landed, featuring beefed-up penalties for violations and sharper enforcement tools, plus a push for tighter reporting of cybersecurity incidents in financial operations. Beijing is clearly signaling it wants tighter control and more rapid response on both sides of the firewall.

So, what can organizations actually do? Top experts urge immediate patching of SAP NetWeaver, strict segmentation of critical networks, and active monitoring for unexplained file uploads or web shell activity. For US-based infrastructure, there’s a particular push to vet any hardware with Chinese origins, update firmware, and verify communication paths for signs of tampering.

To sum it up, the digital dragon is on the prowl this week, and the right mix of vigilance and patch management is your best shield. I’m Ting, and as always, in cyber defense: trust, but verify — and then patch again! Stay safe out there.

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