Chinese Cyber Espionage

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Mandiant Report APT1 Exposing One of China’s Cyber Espionage Units Mandiant APT1 Report Mandiant is an information security company which deals with the advanced threat detections and response solutions. It has investigated various computer security breaches, the major security breaches are attributed to advanced threat actors referred to as the “Advanced Persistent Threat” (APT). APT1 is one of the most prolific cyber espionage groups in China, it has stolen the large amount of confidential data from 141 organizations all over the world. This report was released on 18 February 2013, provided evidences of APT1 group identity, time line and details of attack infrastructure, economic espionage, commands, and its modus operandi. Identity of Adversary Mandiant analysis on APT1 concluded that it is similar to People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398 in its mission, capabilities and resources which is located in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai in China. The Military Unit Cover Designator 61398 refer to the 2nd Bureau of General Staff Department in PLA which mainly focus on signals intelligence, foreign language proficiency, and defense information systems. Mandiat believes there are three personas behind the APT1 commanding by the PLA. First persona is “Ugly Gorilla”. Mandiant found registration details of domains, e-mails used by the UG, revealed that the first identity is Jack Wang. The e-mail address used to register for the PLA forum and the zone hugesoft.org is same. The second persona is “DOTA”, the name used in the most of the web based accounts. The phone number used for the activation of those accounts revealed the details of the DOTA. He taken the name from a video game “Defense of Ancients” which is generally abbreviated DotA.... ... middle of paper ... ...blem, Chinese never faced penalty for their actions. Now the private sector taken lead against Chinese cyber espionage, U.S. government need to take actions against this to maintain the secure critical infrastructure. References David, E. (2013, February 18). Chinese Army Unit Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S. nytimes.com. Retrieved March 30, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking- against-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Mandiant APT1 report. (2013, February 19). Retrieved March 30, 2014, From http://intelreport.mandiant.com/Mandiant_APT1_Report.pdf Jason, H. (2013, February 19). How the U.S. Should Respond to Chinese Cyber Espionage. Usnews.com. Retrieved March 30,2014, from http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/02/19/how-the-us-should- respond-to-chinese-cyberespionage

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