by 
China is becoming more aggressive. Or Britain is looking more closely at the rocks and what lies beneath them. Or both.
Figures showing the scale of China’s covert attacks on the West are sparse.
However, in a rare visit in July 2022, Ken McCallum, director general of MI5, revealed that the number of operations his intelligence agency was running against China had increased sevenfold in just four years.
In the same period, MI5 doubled the size of its mission in China to combat the threat.
In the United States, FBI director Christopher Wray last month issued the most telling warnings that China had already infiltrated critical infrastructure – such as the energy, water and communications sectors – and was waiting “for the moment right to deal with a devastating blow”.
The UK’s latest hack on Beijing – on the Ministry of Defence’s payroll, including sensitive details of military personnel – is an embarrassment to the Government and shows that nowhere is safe from Chinese cyber-hacking.
The hack is a victory for Beijing but also not surprising.
The security services recognize the threat to the United Kingdom from China, which has long been identified as the greatest risk to the long-term security of the West.
China has been accused of investing heavily in teams of cyber hackers, who are bent on collecting vast amounts of personal information and stealing intellectual property that gives the regime a competitive advantage.
China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) has developed sophisticated cyber hacking operations that rival Western intelligence agencies.
And in the past, he has targeted what some have described as the “soft blow” of tech firms, in the last few years he seems to have gone from strength to strength, also attacking the British state.
These are not Russian agents poking around Salisbury with the Novichok nerve agent in a bag, but an army of hackers searching for weaknesses in Britain’s cyber defences.
‘Offices bigger than MI5’
The headquarters of the MSS is based in Beijing with security bureaus of various sizes in cities and provinces throughout the country.
MSS offices in the most prominent locations such as Shanghai and Guangdong are understood to be “bigger than MI5”.
The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), a branch of MI5, has identified several hacking gangs operating out of China.
In March, he said unsuccessful attempts to hack MPs’ email accounts were traced to a group known as APT 31.
The group has been active for 13 years; China is playing the long game.
In another example of officials blowing off Chinese espionage, in March Britain publicly blamed Xi Jinping’s regime for targeting the Electoral Commission’s surveillance and being behind an online “reconnaissance” campaign that aimed at MPs and peers’ email accounts.
APT 31 has also been accused of interfering with the 2020 US elections and was involved in a widespread attack on Microsoft systems in 2021 that gave it access to thousands of email servers. APT 31 is also more colorfully named Violet Typhoon, Judgment Panda, Vinewood Bronze and Zirconium.
APT stands for “advanced persistent threat” and is a naming convention used by Western cyber-intelligence agencies to identify hacking groups associated with foreign adversaries.
More than two dozen Chinese APT groups have been identified.
APT 31 widely used email phishing techniques, in which victims are encouraged to click on malicious links to steal data.
In January, the FBI said a Chinese group called Volt Typhoon had infected hundreds of old routers with Chinese malware to affect critical infrastructure, including a military outpost in the Pacific Ocean.
An analysis by Lumen, a cybersecurity firm, found that a hostile Chinese “botnet” has been active on routers in the US for nearly two years, and would be undetectable to a user because it does not prevent them from operating.
Mr. Xi described science and technology as the main battlefield of the economy.
Cyber hacking is just one of his weapons. He also deploys spies on the ground.
The Chinese regime also runs long-term espionage operations, making connections in the UK that can be used to gain influence in the years to come.
MI5 accused Christine Lee, a lawyer, in January 2022 of being a Chinese spy.
The domestic intelligence service took the unprecedented step of issuing an alert to Parliament warning MPs to steer clear of her, accusing Ms Lee of “knowingly engaging in political interference”.
Ms Lee denies the allegations – she has never been charged with any criminal offense – and is suing MI5, demanding to know the basis of the allegations.
Currently, the West and China are effectively at war.
What you see is not a war and there are no civilian casualties.
The attack on MoD payroll is just the latest skirmish.
In the long run, if China wins, it will become a world superpower. The stakes are so high.
