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Inside Sophos' 5-Year War With the Chinese Hackers Hijacking Its Devices


Sophos went so far as to plant surveillance “implants” on its own devices to catch the hackers at work—and in doing so, revealed a glimpse into China's R&D pipeline of intrusion techniques.

Sophos says it’s telling that story now not just to share a glimpse of China's pipeline of hacking research and development, but also to break the cybersecurity industry's awkward silence around the larger issue of vulnerabilities in security appliances serving as entry points for hackers. Using registration data and records of downloads of code Sophos made available to its customers, the X-Ops team eventually identified a handful of machines it believed were being used as guinea pig devices for Chinese hackers as they sought to find vulnerabilities and test their intrusion techniques prior to deployment. Later, Sophos says, a different Chinese state-sponsored group appears to have exploited a bypass for its patch for that vulnerability to target government agencies outside of Asia, in one instance hacking an embassy shortly before it was set to host officials from China's ruling Communist Party.

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