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Hacking groups based in China have breached 95.2 gigabytes of immigration data from the Indian government as the country continues to be one of the prime targets of Beijing hackers, an investigation by The Washington Post revealed.
The Washington Post published a report on Thursday which said that a trove of documents was leaked by Chinese state-linked hacking groups, that are targeting foreign governments, companies and infrastructure for carrying out large-scale cyber attacks.
These hackers are exploiting “vulnerabilities in software systems from companies including Microsoft, Apple and Google”, the report said.
“The cache — containing more than 570 files, images and chat logs — offers an unprecedented look inside the operations of one of the firms that Chinese government agencies hire for on-demand, mass data-collecting operations,” the report further said.
The leaked files were posted to GitHub last week and deemed credible by cybersecurity experts. These files showed details of contracts to extract foreign data via cyber attacks, targeting 20 foreign governments, including India, United Kingdon, Taiwan, Malaysia and more.
These documents belonged to a Chinese company called ISoon, headquartered in Shanghai and known to sell third-party hacking and data gathering services state-owned companies and Chinese government bureaus, reported The Post.
ISoon also breached “democracy organisations” in China’s semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, universities and the NATO military alliance, cybersecurity firm SentinelLabs researchers wrote in a blog post Wednesday.
The Washington Post reported that one of the leaked ISoon documents showed a spreadsheet of 80 potential targets for a cyber attack, and India had already successfully been hit.
“One spreadsheet listed 80 overseas targets that iSoon hackers appeared to have successfully breached. The haul included 95.2 gigabytes of immigration data from India and a 3 terabyte collection of call logs from South Korea’s LG U Plus telecom provider,” the report said.
ISoon’s official website was not available after Thursday morning, but the data breach documents showed that the company had internal communication access, including email access of employees from foreign companies and government officed.
Chinese hackers breached immigration data from Indian government: Report – Hindustan Times
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