China: Not as innocent as they look!
The APT40, which sounds like a name given to an airplane, is apparently the title of a Chinese-based cyber group. The modus operandi of this group isn’t to steal money or bars of gold from worlds most secured places — Thank God for that! but to gain access to uncommunicated and classified information. One might think why would a group of IT experts would want to obtain pieces of classified data but that’s where the real puzzle fits in; it’s deeply associated with the Chinese government.
Back in 2013, it was given a bunch of names such as TEMP.Periscope, TEMP.Jumper and Leviathan bit now ultimately it comes down to APT40, which in my personal opinion sounds much cooler! According to several investigations lead by targeted nations, all of them point to China as the ‘driver of the operation’. The reason for this claim is because its operational hours are the same as China’s Standard Time. Moreover, when tracking these cyber hackers back, the domain name traces back to resellers based in (pause for a guess) CHINA!
Well, you have to learn a thing or two before actually playing in the cyber field Xi Jinping. Coming down to its accomplishments, it has already managed to clog and transfer information from several research centers and institutions which are involved in naval research in an attempt to somehow accelerate the growth of Naval Industry in China. Other than Naval, Chemicals, Telecom, Industrial Equipment, Aerospace and Defense, and High-Tech sectors too are targeted in nations of Belgium, USA, UK, Malaysia, Germany and so on. Wow! Seems like diversification tends to be its foremost priority. However, the actual reason behind targeting these industries is because of they in one way or another, overlap with the maritime sector.
Closely observing the trend of the countries under the target, researchers suggest that these nations are all those involved in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This was a friendship treaty introduced by China with the idea of joining certain continents by land and sea to encourage feasible trade and growth. However, targeting the same countries with which it looks forward to forming a treaty with is still a confusing bubble, which is yet to burst. Until then, China’s cyber group continues to pave its way into unwelcomed data.
