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China Privacy Security

Chinese Hackers Posing As the UN Human Rights Council Are Attacking Uyghurs (technologyreview.com) 91

Posted by BeauHD from the ongoing-hacking-campaigns dept.
Chinese-speaking hackers are masquerading as the United Nations in ongoing cyber-attacks against Uyghurs, according to the cybersecurity firms Check Point and Kaspersky. MIT Technology Review reports: Researchers identified an attack in which hackers posing as the UN Human Rights Council send a document detailing human rights violations to Uyghur individuals. It is in fact a malicious Microsoft Word file that, once downloaded, fetches malware: the likely goal, say the two companies, is to trick high-profile Uyghurs inside China and Pakistan into opening a back door to their computers. "We believe that these cyber-attacks are motivated by espionage, with the endgame of the operation being the installation of a back door into the computers of high-profile targets in the Uyghur community," said Lotem Finkelstein, head of threat intelligence at Check Point, in a statement. "The attacks are designed to fingerprint infected devices, including all of [their] running programs. From what we can tell, these attacks are ongoing, and new infrastructure is being created for what look like future attacks."

In addition to pretending to be from the United Nations, the hackers also built a fake and malicious website for a human rights organization called the "Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation," according to the report. The group's fake website offers grants -- but in fact, anybody who attempts to apply for a grant is prompted to download a false "security scanner" that is in fact a back door into the target's computer, the researchers explained. "The attackers behind these cyber-attacks send malicious documents under the guise of the United Nations and fake human rights foundations to their targets, tricking them into installing a backdoor to the Microsoft Windows software running on their computers," the researchers wrote. This allows the attackers to collect basic information they seek from the victim's computer, as well as running more malware on the machine with the potential to do more damage. The researchers say they haven't yet seen all the capabilities of this malware. The researchers weren't able to determine an exact known hacking group, but the code in these attacks "was found to be identical to code found on multiple Chinese-language hacking forums and may have been copied directly from there," the report notes.
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Chinese Hackers Posing As the UN Human Rights Council Are Attacking Uyghurs More

Chinese Hackers Posing As the UN Human Rights Council Are Attacking Uyghurs

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  • Back door is not the "end game" (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I wish the liberal media would stop trying to paint the Chinese genocide of Uyghurs as a "hacking operation." The end game is the extermination of all non-communist ethnic groups in China. Full stop.

    But... cheap goods... so the rest of the world turns a completely blind eye.

  • One of my best friends growing up was a uigger, so I know hard it was. White boys should be able to listen to Kanye without fearing repercussion, I hope we can all agree.

  • Free Tibet (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Free Tibet The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 The Tiananmen Square Massacre
  • I mean, posing as the UNHRC? Of which China, famous proponent of human rights that they are, is a member? All we need is the Benny Hill theme to make this complete.
  • China wants a homogeneous society. It is easier to manage. There is a saying in China "the nail that sticks up gets hammered".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      China wants a homogeneous society. It is easier to manage. There is a saying in China "the nail that sticks up gets hammered".

      Is this supposed to make it okay?

      Germany wanted a homogenous society in the 30's. They used similar methods to what China does now, only less sophisticated.

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