Police in Guangzhou, the capital of south China’s Guangdong Province, announced on Tuesday that a hacker organization backed by Taiwan authorities is behind recent cyberattacks on a tech company in the Chinese mainland.
According to the police report, technical analysis and traces from extracted attack programs and system logs led to the conclusion that the hacker group has been conducting large-scale cyber probes against over 1,000 critical network systems in more than 10 provincial-level regions across the mainland. Targets included the military industry, government agencies, and sectors like energy, hydropower, and transportation.
“The hacker organization has significantly increased the scale and frequency of attacks since last year, showing a clear intent to harass and sabotage, with highly malicious motives,” the police stated.
Technical specialists noted that while the organization displayed low technical capabilities, it struck a wide range of targets. These attempts have been repeatedly detected and thwarted by the mainland’s network defense systems.
The cybercriminals reportedly used VPNs, overseas cloud servers, and botnets to conduct their attacks via numerous foreign IP addresses originating from countries including the United States, France, the Republic of Korea, and Japan, in an effort to conceal their actual origins.
“However, tracing the entire process of the cyberattacks and uncovering their real intentions was not difficult,” the police added.
