Hackers associated with the Chinese government have tried to penetrate at least seven US companies in the three weeks since Washington and Beijing agreed not to spy on each other for commercial reasons, a prominent US security firm said.
CrowdStrike Inc said software it placed at five US technology and two pharmaceutical companies had detected and rebuffed the attacks, which began on Sept. 26.
On Sept. 25, US President Barack Obama said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had agreed that neither government would knowingly support cybertheft of corporate secrets to support domestic businesses. The agreement stopped short of restricting spying to obtain government secrets, including those held by private contractors.
CrowdStrike cofounder Dmitri Alperovitch said in an interview that he believed the hackers who attacked the seven companies were affiliated with the Chinese government based in part on the servers and software they used.
The software included a program known as Derusbi, Alperovitch said.
Other analysts have said Derusbi previously turned up in attacks on Virginia defense contractor VAE Inc and health insurer Anthem Inc.
Alperovitch said the hackers came from a variety of groups, including one that CrowdStrike had previously named Deep Panda.
The “primary benefits of the intrusion seem clearly aligned to facilitate theft of intellectual property and trade secrets, rather than to conduct traditional, national-
security-related intelligence collection,” CrowdStrike said in a blog post published yesterday.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) repeated that the Beijing government opposed all forms of hacking or stealing commercial secrets.
“Internet hacking attacks are marked by their secretive, cross border nature,” she told a daily news briefing.
CrowdStrike said it had notified the White House of its findings, but declined to identify the targeted companies.
A senior Obama administration official said the government was aware of CrowdStrike’s findings, but declined to address the company’s conclusions.
“As we move forward, we will monitor China’s cyberactivities closely and press China to abide by all of its commitments,” said the official who did not want to be identified by name.
Another US cybersecurity company, FireEye Inc, said the state-sponsored Chinese hackers that it monitored were still active, but it was too soon to say whether their aims had shifted.
“It is premature to conclude that activity during this short time frame constitutes economic espionage,” FireEye spokesman Vitor De Souza said.
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