by The United States and the United Kingdom have revealed a global Chinese hacking plot that targeted White House staff and the state department as well as British MPs and the Electoral Commission.
Washington and London announced sanctions on two people and one company linked to APT31, a state-affiliated group in China, in response to cyber attacks that “threatened national security”.
The attack on the Commission, the United Kingdom’s election watchdog, was identified in October 2022, but the hackers were able to access the commission’s systems for more than a year from August 2021.
It exposed the personal details of 40 million voters because the Commission had the name and address of anyone in the UK who was registered to vote between 2014 and 2022, as well as the names of those who were registered as voters overseas.
It also emerged that Beijing had eyed a group of Members and colleagues who held hawkish views on China. They were among 43 parliamentary email accounts targeted with malicious tracking links.
Oliver Dowden, the Deputy Prime Minister, told MPs that any hostile cyber activity targeting UK parliamentarians was “totally unacceptable” and said the two attacks showed “a clear and persistent pattern of behavior that indicates hostile intent from China”.
But his announcement sparked outrage among some MPs who felt the sanctions did not go far enough. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, one of the MPs accused of spying, said his statement was “like an elephant giving birth to a mouse” and called for China to be officially labeled as a threat to Britain.
Robert Jenrick, a former minister, declared the Government’s response “weak”, saying: “It is clear that the Government is not holding China to account for their attack on our democracy. Allowing three years for two people and a small company is disastrous. This weak response will only strengthen China to continue its aggression towards the UK.”
Suella Braverman, a former home secretary, said it was “absolutely clear” that China was a hostile state that posed an “unprecedented threat” to national security. She said there was a “very strong case” for adding it to the foreign influence registration scheme.
Washington said “a wide range of high-ranking US government officials and their advisers, who are central to US national security”, were targeted, including White House and State Department staff.
Members of Congress were also on the list, including Democratic and Republican senators, the United States Naval Academy and the United States Naval War College’s China Institute of Maritime Studies.
The Department of Justice charged seven Chinese nationals with ties to APT 31, which it said had “spent approximately 14 years targeting US and foreign critics, businesses and political officials for purposes of economic espionage and intelligence promote the PRC’s foreigners”.
Announcing the charges, the department said the case exposed China’s “massive illegal hacking operation”, which targeted sensitive data from American journalists, academics and companies as well as government officials.
Washington announced that it sanctioned the Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company Limited (Wuhan XRZ), which it said was a “front company” for China’s state security ministry and was a front for multiple cyber-malicious operations. .
Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin, two Chinese nationals affiliated with Wuhan XRZ, were also named for their roles in “malicious cyber operations” that were responsible for “directly endangering US national security”.
‘Sophisticated hacking techniques’
The Department of Justice said that APT31 was part of a “cyber espionage program run by the Hubei state security department of the Ministry of state security, located in the city of Wuhan”, and that the seven defendants targeted “networks, email accounts, cloud storage accounts and telephone call records, with some surveillance of dangerous email accounts spanning many years”.
The group operated by sending more than 10,000 malicious emails to targets, purporting to be from major news outlets or journalists. They contained hidden tracking links that would reveal the target’s location, IP address and devices to the hackers when opened.
When the targets opened the emails, the group used “sophisticated hacking techniques” to gain access to personal data, the department said.
Foreign Office officials said the majority of MPs and peers accused of spying by Beijing were “outspoken in calling out China’s malign activity”.
The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), part of GCHQ, said Parliament’s security department “identified the cyber attacks” and successfully mitigated them “before any account could be compromised”.
On Monday, it emerged that Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, called Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, to discuss the attacks.
The NCSC will publish new guidance for organizations involved in co-ordinating elections, such as local authorities, which will advise officials on how they can improve the protection of their election management systems against cyber-hacks.
Earlier on Monday, Sir Iain said China’s critics would not be “bullied into silence” as he compared the West’s approach towards Beijing to the turbulent 1930s.
Britain has been “too passive” towards China’s influence abroad and has turned a “blind eye” to its malign activities, the former Conservative leader has said.
He spoke at a press conference in Westminster alongside Tim Loughton, a former minister, and Stewart McDonald, an MP from the Scottish National Party.
Beijing-sanctioned Sir Iain said: “Along with other MPs, activists and dissidents, we have been subject to harassment, impersonation and attempted hacking from China for some time. Beijing, and other parliamentary colleagues, will not be bullied into Beijing.
“The behavior of the Chinese government has gone unchecked for years. We have been too passive as Beijing’s influence operations abroad have rapidly expanded, turning a blind eye to what the intelligence and security committee called the penetration of ‘every sector of the UK economy’.
“We need to be much stronger and tougher. The lesson we learned from the 1930s is that flattery doesn’t work – if you’re strong, and tell them what’s wrong and tell them you’re not going to put up with it, they’ll probably come back eventually .
“But if you don’t, they keep taking advantage of you and that’s our biggest problem.”
Chinese Embassy: ‘baseless’ allegations
Sir Iain said it was “unbelievable” that there was still a debate going on within the Government about whether or not China would be in the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme.
“Still, the UK has yet to impose a single sanction on officials responsible for the destruction of freedoms in Hong Kong, despite the UK being one of the two duty bearers, with China, under the Sino-British Joint Declaration,” which he said.
“In contrast, the United States has approved over 40. We must now enter a new era of relations with China, dealing with the contemporary Chinese Communist Party as it really is, not as we hope it will be.
“Today’s announcement should be a decisive moment in which the UK stands up for values, human rights and the international rules-based system on which we all depend.”
The Chinese embassy in London described the accusations of a crackdown by the UK as “baseless” and “absolutely unfounded”, saying a “serious démarche” had been issued to British diplomats in response.
“The UK’s hyperbole of the so-called ‘Chinese cyber-attacks’ is complete political manipulation and malicious slander, without any basis, and the announcement of sanctions,” he said.
“The UK has falsely accused China of trying to disrupt UK democracy. This is just a publicity stunt. This is also a typical example of a thief crying ‘catch thieves’.”
