Chinese Hacker Bonanza: Fire Ant Frenzy, Salt Typhoon Strikes, and Microsofts Meltdown

This is your Red Alert: China's Daily Cyber Moves podcast.

Listeners, Ting here, your go-to for decoding all things China, cyber, and everything hacking—let’s plug in to Red Alert: China’s Daily Cyber Moves.

If you’ve checked your feeds lately, you know the past 72 hours have been digital pandemonium. The headliner? Fire Ant, a Chinese cyber-espionage group, is going wild exploiting VMware and F5 vulnerabilities. They aren’t just tip-toeing into networks—they’re bulldozing straight through, hitting key U.S. systems running virtualization platforms like ESXi and vCenter. These are the backbone for government and corporate clouds, so not your grandma’s solitaire machine, okay? According to Sygnia, the targeted servers let Fire Ant burrow into secure, segmented systems that were supposed to be air-gapped fortresses. The timeline? Attacks ramped up late July and have only grown more frequent, with fresh indicators showing lateral movement attempts just last night.

But the all-star team doesn’t stop at Fire Ant—cue Salt Typhoon, which, according to a memo from the Department of Homeland Security, breached an unnamed state’s Army National Guard network from March through December last year. Data exfil—names, credentials, plans—the whole shebang, raising red flags for lateral attacks on other National Guard and government systems nationwide.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has had a rough week. Their SharePoint on-prem users faced a one-two punch: Chained bugs exploited by Chinese-nexus groups like Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon. These exploits landed before Microsoft could ship out critical patches. Systems were breached at the Education Department, Florida Department of Revenue, the Rhode Island legislature, and even the National Nuclear Security Administration. Bloomberg suggests that attacks came so hot on the heels of patch disclosures that some suspect a Microsoft China partner may have tipped off the hackers. Nasty escalation scenario? One insider leak, and now, SharePoint vulnerabilities are a standing invitation to every Chinese APT group with a grudge.

It’s not just software and credentials. U.S. infrastructure—think electrical grids and natural gas—could be one keystroke away from chaos. Cybersecurity expert Arnie Bellini warns China’s “killswitch” threat is very real; suspicious control codes discovered in Chinese-branded inverters, batteries, and EV chargers could let them remotely shut down critical U.S. utilities. Some of these shady code snippets were found in products as recently as this May, and officials are scrambling with product recalls and new supply chain inspections, but let’s be honest, closing this barn door is going to take a while.

Emergency alerts from CISA and the FBI came thick and fast over the weekend. CISA rushed out advisories on three newly exploited vulnerabilities; FBI bulletins flashed guidance urging all admins to patch VMware, F5, and SharePoint systems yesterday, not tomorrow. The American Hospital Association even warned its members to brace for ransomware spikes and check their remote management tools for backdoors.

Escalation? If these zero-days keep dropping, and if the rumored coordinated “wave attacks” materialize—where multiple Chinese groups launch synchronized strikes on both grid infrastructure and federal IT—the U.S. might trigger its cyber mutual defense protocols, going straight to so-called “active defense.”

Listeners, stay updated: patch, monitor logs for odd jumps in outbound traffic, and if your organization uses Chinese hardware, review configs for any mysterious remote access tools. That Trojan horse Bellini warned us about? It’s not rolling out—it’s already in the courtyard.

Thanks for tuning in—smash that subscribe button and don’t sleep on your cyber hygiene. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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