In December 2024, the US Bureau of Industry and Security imposed a new set of export controls on Chinese companies, escalating tensions between the two countries to a new level. After Beijing retaliated with a ban on export of rare earth metals, the matter apparently receded - but only to be fought in cyber space.
A couple of weeks ago, the US Treasury department reported a hacking incident where they accused a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor of accessing treasury department's computers remotely. Instead of directly hacking the department's infrastructure, the APT actor compromised a third-party service provider BeyondTrust for API keys to remotely access Treasury department's assets. Under the Federal Information Security Modernisation Act (FISMA) of 2014, all US state departments must file a comprehensive report about attack vectors, the impact on operations and the incident response actions taken, if an APT actor is found involved in hacking.
Till the final report of cyber inquiry is published in public domain, it is hard to tell what the modus operandi of the APT group was. However, the US's cyber capabilities leave a lot to be desired. In September 2024, a severe cyber attack on US telcos including ATandT, Verizon, T-Mobile and Lumen Technologies was discovered that had been targeting high-profile targets including presidential candidates for months.
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