Chinese Hackers Were Found Exploiting NSA Cybersecurity Tools Against US Allies

Arnav Dhar - May 13, 2019


Chinese Hackers Were Found Exploiting NSA Cybersecurity Tools Against US Allies

Symantec found that China-backed hacker groups are guilty of attacking U.S. allies using NSA cybersecurity tools

Chinese state-related hackers took advantage of American's NSA-designed tools to counter the U.S. allies, according to a recent report by California-based cybersecurity company Symantec. These tools are supposed to be used against the large East Asian country.

Eric Chien, Symantec's officer, in an interview with the NY Times said:

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Symantec called this group "Buckeye" in their Monday report without explicitly mentioning China's relation. But the U.S. Department of Justice believes that they are a contractor of Chinese Security Ministry. This group is alleged to used American cybersecurity tools for multiple cyber attacks across the world, particularly in Luxemburg, Belgium, Vietnam, Hongkong, and the Philippines.

Buckeye Infographic 970x1164
Symantec's infographic about the attacks.

The targets of these attacks are scientific and educational organizations or telecommunication networks that all are related to American ally nations.

Until now, the researchers are not sure how the Chinese state-funded hackers are capable of tweaking American tools' code for their own purposes, but they believe that they have captured the tools from one of NSA's attacks on their own system, and took advantage of them to counter, according to what they know about the timing of the attacks and other clues.

Symantec experts also found that NSA tools have been repurposed by Chinese hackers groups as early as 2016, when 2 of its tools, called Eternal Synergy and Double Pulsar, were used for the attacks. Beforehand, they have never seen a situation in which someone stealthily captured their attackers' code to turn the table against other targets.

When it comes to why the Chinese-state-backed groups didn't use these tools to counterattack the U.S. networks themselves, Symantec predicted that they believe American systems have a defense against their own tools and that they don't want the U.S. to acknowledge that they have stolen them.

Nevertheless, the loss of NSA tools into Chinese' hands sparks a debate over whether the U.S. govt should keep building hi-tech and dangerous tools if they are not able of keeping them safe under their hands.

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