China, A Notorious Cyber Hacker, Is Now Getting It Back From The U.S.A

In what can be considered a case of hunter becoming the hunted, China after years of harassing other nations with cyber espionage and attacks, has now alleged that it was hit by a cyber-attack, accusing the U.S. of launching "tens of thousands" of cyberattacks, pilfering troves of sensitive data from a research university.

In a report released Monday, China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) accused the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) of carrying out "tens of thousands of malicious attacks on network targets in China in recent years".

Interestingly, the co-author of the Chinese report, state-owned internet security company Qihoo 360 is itself under US sanctions over national security concerns – that the NSA was masterminding hack attacks against China.

China has long been considered a master-mind in conducting cyber operations worldwide, stealing intellectual property and sensitive data and engaging in malicious cyber activities to pursue its national interests.

A 2007 Congressional advisory group had declared China "the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies."

The U.S. National Intelligence 2022 Annual Threat Assessment terms China as a world leader "in applying surveillance and censorship to monitor its population and repress dissent, particularly among minorities, pointing out that.

"China presents the broadest, most active, and persistent cyber espionage threat to U.S. Government and private sector networks. China's cyber pursuits and export of related technologies increase the threats of attacks against the U.S. homeland, suppression of U.S. web content that Beijing views as threatening to its control, and the expansion of technology-driven authoritarianism globally."

For several years, the U.S. agencies have blamed Chinese cyber-espionage for targeting private, commercial, military and government establishment in the country.

Technology companies like Google and Microsoft among several others have all been victims of Chinese cyber-attacks.

Apart from the U.S. almost every country, from the Asia-Pacific to Europe to North America, which China considers hostile to its interest have been victims of cyber-espionage and hacking attacks carried out by China-based groups.

In April 2022, Ukraine blamed the cyber-warfare unit of the China's People's Liberation Army of launching cyberattacks against hundreds of Ukrainian government sites.

An Aug. 2020 report in the Wired spoke of how Taiwan was targeted by China's state-sponsored hackers for years in a campaign called Operation Skeleton Key China which pillaged the country's semiconductor industry stealing source code, software development kits, chip designs, and more.

It was recently reported that China-based hackers had targeted governments in Australia, Malaysia and Europe, as well as businesses that operate in the South China Sea.