China Had Persistent Access to US, Allied Networks for Years: White House Official

A Biden administration official says hackers in communist China maintained persistent access to U.S. and allied systems for many years. Israel Soong, director for East Asia and Pacific cyber policy at the National Security Council, says the cyber campaign appears to be part of a wider effort by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to prepare for attacks on critical U.S. infrastructure. He made those comments a few days ago during a speech at the Hudson Institute, which is a conservative think tank in Washington.

Mr. Soong’s comments appeared to reference a malicious cyber campaign acknowledged by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in February. Back then, CISA said that CCP-backed hackers were “seeking to pre-position themselves on IT networks for disruptive or destructive cyberattacks against U.S. critical infrastructure.”

At the time, intelligence leaders told Congress that the intrusion was detected in December 2023 and that malware had been removed from 600 U.S. government systems, but it still remained in multiple infrastructure systems that are run by private companies.

Mr. Soong went on to say the Chinese regime is not just targeting our infrastructure systems, but the systems of other countries as well, including some of our allies. He says, “Beijing sees cyber and emerging technology as critical to the strategy to reshape the United States-led international order to be more favorable to the priorities of the Chinese Communist Party.”

His comments follow other reports earlier this year by Dutch intelligence agencies, which found that state-backed hackers in China had compromised more than 20,000 systems across dozens of Western governments, international organizations, and a large number of companies within the defense industry.

That campaign, known as COATHANGER, allowed China-based hackers to achieve “permanent access” to vital systems, but even today, it remains unclear if it was designed purely for espionage purposes or as part of the broader CCP effort to prepare critical systems in foreign nations for sabotage.

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