Massive Cyber-Attack: China hacks groups in Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia

China on Tuesday hacked dozens of Israeli public and private sector groups as well groups in Iran, Saudi Arabia and a variety of other countries for information on technology and business advances.

Long term spying strategy
The international cybersecurity company FireEye announced that a massive cyberattack appears to be part of a long-term spying strategy in the area of technology and business competition and advancement, rather than a desire to harm any of the target countries or businesses, reported The Jerusalem Post. According to FireEye, Beijing does not discriminate along any of the fault lines in the region, using its cyber tools to spy on a wide array of Middle Eastern countries, which are often at odds with each other, while all doing business with China.

Steal sensitive business information
The goal seems to have been to gain intelligence into achieving better negotiation outcomes in terms of pricing by viewing internal email discussions and assessments, and to appropriate certain key technological developments where possible, reported The Jerusalem Post. In addition, the attack is tied to the cyber exploitation of holes in Microsoft's SharePoint, announced by the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) in 2019. Its maximum impact is not currently being felt. Estimates are that some public and private sector Israeli entities started to repel the attack once the SharePoint vulnerability was announced in 2019, but that in other cases, Chinese spying in Israel continued deep into 2020, reported The Jerusalem Post. The timing of the current announcement seemed to dovetail with the announcement by governments in Europe, Asia, the US and NATO in July of a similar massive cyber attack carried out by China.

(With ANI inputs)