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.
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