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Hacking Group Presents 'Long-Standing' Threat To Japan (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Japanese energy, oil and gas, and transport industries have been among those targeted by a group of cyberattackers focusing its efforts on Japanese critical infrastructure. According to research at Cylance SPEAR, the cyber threat group had previously been targeting U.S. defence agencies but has recently turned its attention to East Asia. While SPEAR does not believe the criminals have yet conducted "destructive or disruptive" attacks, it argues that they have been patiently and persistently spying on a range of Japanese organisations, such as construction companies and financial firms. The researchers have dubbed the campaign Operation Dust Storm, and have identified phishing lures related to current affairs as the attackers' tool of choice. SPEAR noted that the cyberattack group has managed to stay under the radar by registering new domain names, relying heavily on Dynamic DNS, and using a range of customised backdoors – especially a number of second-stage backdoors with hardcoded proxy addresses and credentials. The group also adopted several Android backdoors to support its mobile operations.
Please don't use camelCase punishment. I feel sorry for the camels.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
It's China. Everyone knows it's China. Nobody should be surprised that it is, in fact China. In fact you, should be extremely surprised if it turns out not to be China.
China has been conducting a whole lot of saber rattling as they stretch out their newly found economic and military might. Right now it's a lot of grandstanding and rearranging deck chairs on barren useless islands and petty games involving dumping gravel on coral reefs and pretending that they're islands.
It's mostly a show for their own public and reminding everyone in SE Asia who's an up-and-coming power.. But China will become a real force in the future and they need to practice after all.
This is relevant because since the 80s the US has been encouraging Japan to re-arm and become their own independent force again. Japan will become the second largest military force in the region and is an absolute western ally.
Of course China wants to keep tabs on what's going on. Particularly industry and military-industry developments. It's the very basics of intelligence really.