Some proof suggests the 2021 India-focused hacking marketing campaign and the brand new energy grid breach recognized by Symantec have been each carried out by the identical workforce of hackers with hyperlinks to the broad umbrella group of Chinese language state-sponsored spies often called APT41, which is typically referred to as Depraved Panda or Barium. Symantec notes that the hackers whose grid-hacking intrusion it tracked used a chunk of malware often called ShadowPad, which was deployed by an APT41 subgroup in 2017 to contaminate machines in a provide chain assault that corrupted code distributed by networking software program agency NetSarang and in a number of incidents since then. In 2020, 5 alleged members of APT41 have been indicted and identified as working for a contractor for China’s Ministry of State Safety often called Chengdu 404. However even simply final 12 months, the US Secret Service warned that hackers inside APT41 had stolen millions in US Covid-19 relief funds, a uncommon occasion of state-sponsored cybercrime concentrating on one other authorities.
Though Symantec did not hyperlink the grid-hacking group it is calling RedFly to any particular subgroup of APT41, researchers at cybersecurity agency Mandiant level out that each the RedFly breach and the years-earlier Indian grid-hacking marketing campaign used the identical area as a command-and-control server for his or her malware: Websencl.com. That means the RedFly group could in actual fact be tied to each instances of grid hacking, says John Hultquist, who leads risk intelligence at Mandiant. (On condition that Symantec would not title the Asian nation whose grid RedFly focused, Hultquist provides that it could in actual fact be India once more.)
Extra broadly, Hultquist sees the RedFly breach as a troubling signal that China is shifting its focus towards extra aggressive concentrating on of crucial infrastructure like energy grids. For years, China largely targeted its state-sponsored hacking on espionage, whilst different nations like Russia and Iran have tried to breach electrical utilities in obvious makes an attempt to plant malware able to triggering tactical blackouts. The Russian navy intelligence group Sandworm, for instance, has tried to trigger three blackouts in Ukraine—two of which succeeded. One other Russian group tied to its FSB intelligence company often called Berserk Bear has repeatedly breached the US energy grid to achieve an identical functionality, but without ever attempting to cause a disruption.
Given this most up-to-date Chinese language grid breach, Hultquist argues it is now starting to look that some Chinese language hacker groups could have an identical mission to that Berserk Bear group: to keep up entry, plant the malware essential for sabotage, and look forward to the order to ship the payload of that cyberattack at a strategic second. And that mission means the hackers Symantec caught contained in the unnamed Asian nation’s grid will virtually actually return, he says.
“They’ve to keep up entry, which suggests they’re in all probability going to go proper again in there. They get caught, they retool, they usually present up once more,” says Hultquist. “The most important issue right here is their skill to simply keep on track—till it is time to pull the set off.”
