![]() ![]() It attacked the iPhones and Android phones of Tibetans until as recently as May. China has denied past claims that it conducts cyberespionage, adding that it, too, is often a target.Īnother group of researchers, at the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, recently uncovered an overlapping effort, using some of the same code discovered by Google and Volexity. The Chinese police have also made less sophisticated efforts to control Uighurs who have fled, using the chat app WeChat to entice them to return home or to threaten their families.Ĭhina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment. ![]() Such communities in other countries have long been a concern to Beijing, and many in Xinjiang have been sent to camps because relatives traveled or live abroad. ![]() Gaining access to the phones of Uighurs who have fled China - a diaspora that has grown as many have been locked away at home - would be a logical extension of those total surveillance efforts. Specially designed apps have been used to screen Uighurs’ phones, monitor their communications and register their whereabouts. On the streets in Xinjiang, huge numbers of high-end surveillance cameras run facial recognition software to identify and track people. Google researchers who tracked the attacks against iPhones said details about the software flaws that the hackers had preyed on would have been worth tens of millions of dollars on black market sites where information about software vulnerabilities is sold. Security experts say Chinese hackers are very likely targeting protesters’ phones, but they have yet to publish any evidence. And in recent weeks, a security firm traced a monthslong attack on Hong Kong media companies to Chinese hackers. In August, Facebook and Twitter said they had taken down a large network of Chinese bots that was spreading disinformation around the protests. The response from China was swift, threatening a range of business relationships the N.B.A. “Then they turn those tools on foreign targets.”Ĭhina’s willingness to extend the reach of its surveillance and censorship was on display after an executive for the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets tweeted support for protesters in Hong Kong this month. ![]() Lewis, a former United States government official who writes on cybersecurity and espionage for the Center for Strategic Studies in Washington. “The Chinese use their best tools against their own people first because that is who they’re most afraid of,” said James A. In several instances, hackers targeted the cellphones of a minority known as Uighurs, whose home region, Xinjiang, has been the site of a vast build-out of surveillance tech in recent years. The primary targets for these more sophisticated attacks: China’s ethnic minorities and their diaspora in other countries, the researchers said. The government has poured considerable resources into the change, which is part of a reorganization of the national People’s Liberation Army that President Xi Jinping initiated in 2016, security researchers and intelligence officials said.Ĭhina’s hackers have since built up a new arsenal of techniques, such as elaborate hacks of iPhone and Android software, pushing them beyond email attacks and the other, more basic tactics that they had previously employed. SAN FRANCISCO - China’s state-sponsored hackers have drastically changed how they operate over the last three years, substituting selectivity for what had been a scattershot approach to their targets and showing a new determination by Beijing to push its surveillance state beyond its borders. ![]()
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