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Author Mercy Kuo often engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into US Asia policy.   This article highlights a conversation with Christopher R. O’Dea, adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute and author of the forthcoming book “Ships of State: China’s New Maritime Empire,” is the 400th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”

How are China’s shipping companies serving the Chinese state?  Beijing’s state-owned shipping

Following fears that Ford’s electric vehicle supply chain may represent a national security issue, concerned legislators are doubling down by outlining the path battery components are required to take vehicles to get here.  Last week, US Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) accused Ford of having plans that required contracting technology and software firms with close ties to both the Chinese and North Korean governments.  Rep. Gallagher heads up the House Select Committe

The US FBI and US Department of Justice (DOJ) have used a court order to address vulnerabilities in thousands of internet-connected devices that are at the center of a Chinese hacking campaign.  The campaign is targeting sensitive US critical infrastructure, two US officials and a third source familiar with the matter reported to media.

The move is part of a broader, government-wide effort to blunt the impact of a persistent Chinese hacking effort that US officials fear could hinder any US milit

A Chinese cyber espionage group targeting organizations and individuals in China and Japan has remained under the radar for roughly five years, cybersecurity firm ESET https://www.eset.com reports.  Researchers have tracked it as Blackwood and active since at least 2018, the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor has been using Adversary-in-the-Middle (AitM) attacks to deploy a sophisticated implant via the update mechanisms of legitimate software such as Sogou Pinyin, Tencent QQ, and WPS Office

The UK’s Sellafield nuclear facility has denied reports that its IT networks have been attacked by cyber groups linked to Russia and China.  The Guardian said an investigation into the nuclear site in Cumbria found security breaches, dating back to 2015, which it says were not reported to regulators for “several years.”

The year-long investigation, named ‘Nuclear Leaks,’ said sleeper malware which can be used to spy on or attack systems had been embedded in the networks and could still be there.

Our friends at SentinelLabs report that Hack-for-Hire threat actors go by many names, such as surveillance-for-hire, mercenaries, private-sector-offensive-actors (PSOAs), and nonstate offensive threat actors.  Such groups represent an exciting challenge for security researchers and network defenders. They should be considered a severe threat to all organizations, worthy of proactive tracking in ongoing intrusions and analysis of historical cases to understand their significant impacts.  Many pub

Aindrea Campbell knows more than most about high-tech production.  In her previous role, she was senior director of iPad operations at Apple, helping to run the sophisticated assembly lines in China that produce tens of millions of tablet computers each year.  As chief operating officer of Agility Robotics, Campbell will oversee the production of pioneering products in the US.  In September, the company announced that its 70,000 sq ft RoboFab, the “world’s first factory” for building humanlike r

A previously unknown government-backed hacking group is targeting organizations in the manufacturing, IT, and biomedical sectors across Taiwan, Vietnam, the US and an unnamed Pacific island, according to new research from Symantec.

Researchers are tracking the group under the name “Grayling” and said in a report released earlier this week that it is using custom-made malware as well as publicly available tools to attack its targets.  The attacks, which began in February and continued through May

Red Sky Alliance has long presented evident of China’s modern-day Silk Road initiatives.  Much of the Chinese targets were in Africa; many tying in cyber as the linkage.  Below is a good exposé by Sentinel Labs.  In the evolving cyber threat landscape, it’s always important to constantly challenge our biases.  There are large pockets of important threat activity occurring in regions around the world less commonly addressed in Western threat research.  While much attention has rightfully been dra

Cybersecurity agencies from Japan and the US have warned of attacks mounted by a state-backed hacking group from China to stealthily tamper with branch routers and use them as jumping-off points to access the networks of various companies in the two countries.  The attacks have been tied to a malicious cyber actor dubbed BlackTech by the US National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Japan National Police Agency

Hackers attacked the national power grid of an unspecified Asian country earlier this year using malware typically deployed by personnel connected to China’s government, researchers said last week.  Cybersecurity company Symantec declined to attribute the incident to China but pointed to a group it tracks as RedFly.  The group compromised the network for as long as six months, stealing credentials and targeting multiple computers, the researchers said.

The malware, known as ShadowPad, also has b

Recently, British authorities have arrested a man who reportedly spied for China in their government offices in London, resulting in new fears on how Beijing gathers intelligence today.  The incident follows allegations earlier this year that China flew a surveillance balloon over the United States, causing diplomatic problems.  And the USA failed to shoot down the rogue balloon until it had completely covered the country unmolested.

Here are some of the ways China has worked to spy on the weste

The US intelligence community is warning the domestic space industry of the growing risk of espionage and satellite attacks from China, Russia, and other adversaries.  In coordination with the FBI, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a warning about the growing threat of foreign intelligence entities (FIEs) as they continue to launch cyberattacks to gain acces

A newly identified espionage operation run by hackers linked to China’s government has targeted dozens of organizations in Taiwan since the middle of 2021.  Microsoft on Thursday attributed the campaign to a previously unidentified group it named Flax Typhoon.  The goal of the campaign is to not only perform espionage on targeted Taiwanese entities but “maintain access to organizations across a broad range of industries for as long as possible,” the tech giant said.

The group is mainly targeting

BRICS leaders are meeting in South Africa on 22 August 2023 to discuss how to turn a loose cabal of nations, accounting for a quarter of the global economy, into a geopolitical force that can challenge the West's dominance in World affairs.  Russian President Putin, who faces an international arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Ukraine, will not join leaders from Brazil, India, China and South Africa amid rifts over whether to expand the bloc to include dozens of "Global South" nations que

China has reiterated claims that last month's cybersecurity attack on a Wuhan facility was the work of US intelligence agencies, pointing to a "very complex" malware used in the incident.  The Wuhan Earthquake Monitoring Center on 26 July 2023 was reported to be the victim of an attack that appeared to originate from government-backed hackers in the US. The allegations state the attack targeted network equipment that collected seismic intensity data, which measured the magnitude of earthquakes a

Two file management apps on the Google Play Store have been discovered to be spyware, putting the privacy and security of up to 1.5 million Android users at risk.  These apps engage in deceptive behavior and secretly send sensitive user data to malicious servers in China.  Researchers have discovered this infiltration.  Their report shows that both spyware apps, namely File Recovery and Data Recovery (com.spot.music.filedate), with over 1 million installs, and File Manager (com.file.box.master.g

Submarine cables, the backbone network of the global economy and telecommunications, are operating in an increasingly risky environment and are prone to geopolitical, physical, and cyber threats, including nation-state sabotage and spying.  Fiber-optic submarine cables on the ocean floor transmit an estimated 99% of all intercontinental internet traffic and communications, including roughly $10 trillion of financial transactions daily and sensitive government and military communication, making t

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), and Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) published a “Guide to Securing Remote Access Software,” which provides an overview of common exploitations and associated tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by cyber threat actors to exploit the legitimate, beneficial use of this software for easy b

According to industry experts, predictions about the BRICS countries as the fastest-growing economies have not happened. Instead, the alliance now offers a diplomatic forum and development financing outside the Western mainstream.  The acronym began as an optimistic term to describe countries with fast-growing economies at the time.  But now the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, are setting themselves up as an alternative to existing international financial and polit