Belgium has urged China to act on what it has described as “malicious cyberactivities” by Chinese entities liable to affect security in the EU state.
“Belgium assesses these malicious cyberactivities to have been undertaken by Chinese” hacker groups, the Belgian Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation wrote in a statement dated Monday.
It said their activities had targeted the Belgian ministries of defense and the interior, and “significantly affected our sovereignty, democracy, security and society at large.”
UN NORMS IGNORED
“Belgium strongly denounces these malicious cyberactivities, which are undertaken in contradiction with the norms of responsible state behavior as endorsed by all UN member states,” it said.
“We continue to urge the Chinese authorities to adhere to these norms,” Brussels said, demanding that Beijing “take all appropriate measures” to investigate.
PREVIOUS ATTACK
In December last year, a cyberattack on the Belgian Ministry of Defense paralyzed its Web-connected IT systems for several days — although Belgian security services insist no sensible data were accessed.
It remains unclear who authored that attack, which highlighted a security loophole in the Java-based Apache Log4j logging utility where a hacker, allegedly sponsored by the Chinese state, was able remotely to introduce spyware.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant