Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege

This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

Listeners, it’s Ting here—your favorite cyber sleuth fluent in Mandarin, malware, and the mayhem of global hacking. Whew, what a week on Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege! If you thought last week felt tense, grab your firewalls because the past several days have shaken the U.S. cyber community.

Let’s jump straight into the code. The biggest red alert came when elite Chinese cyber group Salt Typhoon was revealed to have quietly infiltrated a U.S. Army National Guard network for nearly a year, from March to December 2024. According to a June DHS memo, these hackers didn’t just stumble in—they mapped out internal topography, snatched strategic operational maps, and made off with the personal data of Guard members. Salt Typhoon is notorious, already linked to the AT&T and Verizon breaches, federal offices, and even congressional leadership. This National Guard hit is on another level, especially since Guard units straddle state and federal authority, creating hybrid vulnerabilities you just don’t see in other branches.

Salt Typhoon’s playbook leaned heavily on exploiting obscure system integrations between the Guard, law enforcement, and state networks. Imagine a spider web laced with unpatched legacy nodes, old Microsoft SharePoint instances—yes, those again—plus lax segmentation between federal and local databases. ToolShell, a remote code exploit, featured heavily; it let the group snoop SharePoint directories, quietly exfiltrating configurations and files. Chris Butera from CISA stressed the real risk: once these attackers get that deep, they could knock out readiness or quietly prep for future sabotage.

Just as the Guard breach news broke, the Pentagon found itself in an equally awkward bind. A ProPublica investigation revealed Microsoft's Defense Department cloud services were—until this week—routinely maintained by China-based engineers, shuttling commands through American “digital escorts.” These escorts, while cleared, were often not cyber experts themselves. Talk about supply chain nightmares! Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth immediately banned all Chinese personnel from Pentagon cloud support and launched a two-week review. Microsoft had to scramble, with spokesperson Frank Shaw promising no China-based engineers are touching DoD systems moving forward.

Senator Tom Cotton pressed for a full reckoning—demanding lists of every contractor and escort used, warning that “meeting the letter of the law” wasn’t enough if escorts couldn’t spot injected malicious scripts. The lesson? Supply chains are only as strong as the geek at the keyboard, and digital babysitting is not cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity expert Dave Kennedy put it bluntly: U.S. adversaries like Salt Typhoon are no longer just lurking for secrets—they’re embedding to disrupt, flip switches, and hold the critical infrastructure hostage if conflict erupts. Think of it as the difference between a pickpocket and an

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This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

Listeners, Ting here, your favorite playful cyber sleuth serving up this week’s blockbuster in “Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege.” If you’ve been following the chaos, you already know: what happens inside our data centers doesn’t stay inside. This week, the red-hot spotlight is on Salt Typhoon, the elite Chinese cyberespionage group that spent nearly a year hitchhiking inside a U.S. state’s Army National Guard network, as revealed by a Department of Homeland Security memo. These folks weren’t browsing memes—they nabbed everything from internal network maps to sensitive personnel data and maybe even blueprints of our operational infrastructure. This is a big deal because the National Guard isn’t just a federal gig—these networks hook into state law enforcement and local government systems, giving Salt Typhoon potential pivot points straight into emergency services if things really hit the fan, and the DHS now warns that the breach could let Beijing pull off similar feats in other states.

This attack wasn’t about a quick smash-and-grab. Salt Typhoon used persistence tricks, moving stealthily through interconnected civilian-military systems, suggesting they studied our hybrid governance for months to pinpoint exactly where we were softest. The attack methodology? Both classic and cutting-edge: credential theft, webshell deployment, living-off-the-land tactics, and stealthy lateral movement between segmented networks. Makes you wish your password was something better than “GoArmy123.”

Meanwhile, the plot thickened after ProPublica dropped its bombshell about Microsoft employing China-based engineers—yes, you heard it right—to support U.S. military cloud systems. These engineers didn’t directly touch Pentagon computers, but their code was relayed in by stateside “digital escorts.” As Senator Tom Cotton bluntly pointed out, most “digital escorts” didn’t have the chops to spot malicious code, so the risk was glaring: imported patches and support could easily become supply chain attack vectors. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, not one for half-measures, ordered an immediate halt, promised a government-wide review, and publicly declared, “China will have zero involvement in our cloud services.” Microsoft’s about-face sent shockwaves across every cloud provider with an international support team.

If that wasn’t enough, Mandiant and CrowdStrike spent the weekend flagging active exploitation of a Microsoft SharePoint vulnerability by China-linked hackers—specifically, deploying webshells to exfiltrate cryptographic secrets from government servers. “This isn’t a one-and-done patch,” warned Charles Carmakal, Mandiant’s CTO, meaning federal and private networks are now in emergency triage mode—assume you’re breached first, ask questions later.

With adversaries getting bolder, American policy is shifting hard: cybersecurity strategists like Dave Kennedy say it’s time the U.S. take an offe

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This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

Today’s Dragon’s Code update comes to you live from the digital trenches—it’s Ting here, your cyber sleuth with all the wit, none of the lag, and just enough paranoia to keep the firewall humming. Listen up, because the past few days have been a masterclass in Chinese cyber operations, and the plot is thicker than malware in an old printer.

Salt Typhoon, everyone’s favorite state-backed menace, was caught red-handed prowling U.S. critical infrastructure again. The Department of Defense discovered Salt Typhoon embedded inside a National Guard network, using classic methods—breaching through old, unpatched routers and firewalls. These devices don’t just hang on perimeters; they often talk with local law enforcement, emergency management, even school districts, meaning the impact can ripple from a state’s Guard all the way down to city hall. A senior Pentagon official said, “Their persistence is their weapon of choice. The risk isn’t just espionage—it’s long-term sabotage readiness.”

But the attacks didn’t stop there. Salt Typhoon shifted from picking targets to blanket-spraying vulnerable edge devices worldwide. According to Pete Renals from Palo Alto Networks, this scattershot approach is about building a deep, quiet presence in telecom infrastructure. And it isn’t just the U.S. on the menu—big names like Comcast, MTN Group in South Africa, and LG Uplus in South Korea found compromised devices among their networks. Even if the telcos themselves weren’t breached directly, their clients’ exposed gadgets became backdoor highways into all kinds of sensitive communications.

Meanwhile, in the semiconductor sector, RedMike (also known as another flavor of Salt Typhoon) kicked off multiple waves of attacks, slurping credentials from Taiwanese chipmakers and American analysts using spear-phishing, exploiting zero-days in Cisco equipment, and deploying custom malware like Voldemort—a backdoor even Dumbledore would find troublesome. Proofpoint and Recorded Future both flagged a hunt for proprietary tech and trade secrets, with phishing emails dressed up as job offers or investment proposals landing in inboxes from MIT to Mexico City. The game? Patent theft and strategic leverage during ongoing geopolitical drama.

Here’s a spicy subplot: a ProPublica investigation uncovered that Microsoft, managing Pentagon cloud infrastructure, often tasks Chinese engineers with high-impact maintenance—under the watchful eyes of so-called digital escorts (Americans with clearances but not always deep technical chops). Senator Tom Cotton called for a full audit of every military contractor using Chinese nationals in the supply chain, warning Congress that a lack of expertise means malicious code could slip past unnoticed. “We’re begging for zero-days,” grumbled one congressional aide.

On the defense side, CISA amped up threat monitoring and recommended forced patching in critical infrastructure. Some telecom

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This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

What a week to be a cyber analyst, and what a wild ride in the world of Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege. Yes, listeners, it’s Ting—your favorite expert on everything China, hacking, and, apparently, surviving on less sleep than a caffeinated bug bounty hunter. Buckle up; we’re diving straight in.

The headlines are ablaze with the exploits of Salt Typhoon, the Chinese APT group that’s become the stuff of sleepless nights for American cyber defenders. Between March and December last year, Salt Typhoon pulled off an audacious breach of a U.S. state’s Army National Guard network—a heist so sophisticated the DoD is still reeling. The hackers exfiltrated network configurations, administrator credentials, and intercepted communications with National Guard units across every U.S. state and even reached four U.S. territories. That means attacker access to a golden map of our military’s digital nervous system—potentially exposing critical infrastructure defenses in fusion centers scattered through 14 states, according to reports first seen by NBC News. Imagine the enemy having a skeleton key to every door in your digital house. Spooky, right?

How’d they pull it off? Let’s get geeky. Salt Typhoon, as detailed by the Department of Homeland Security and cloud security experts, leveraged a grab-bag of vulnerabilities—classic CVEs exploited through anonymized, rented IPs. Think of it as digital ninjas using forged passports at every border checkpoint. Once inside, they roamed for months, grabbing over 1,400 config files from 70+ government and infrastructure networks. This treasure trove included diagrams and access credentials ripe for future attacks. Their TTPs (that’s tactics, techniques, and procedures) were textbook nation-state: stealthy lateral movement, credential harvesting, and exfiltration hidden deep within legitimate network traffic.

Who’s behind the mask? Attribution is never 100%, but both the Pentagon and Microsoft’s internal teams point straight to state-sponsored actors with direct ties to the Chinese central government. Salt Typhoon has already made headlines hacking telecom giants like AT&T, Verizon, and global carriers, snagging everything from private call records to wiretap access. It’s not just defense: critical infrastructure—energy, water, government offices—are all in their crosshairs.

Let’s not ignore tech’s awkward moment on center stage. Microsoft has been roundly criticized for its “digital escort” cloud access model, which reportedly let China-based engineers—sometimes supervised by folks without full technical chops—potentially glimpse sensitive Pentagon operations data. While a Microsoft spokesperson insists there are platform-level controls and federal audits in place, national security experts like Michael Lucci have called for the Pentagon to rethink its reliance on any vendor with such lapses. As Michael Sobolik from the Hudson Institute quipped, i

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This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

Hey there, folks I'm Ting, and I'm here to give you the lowdown on the latest in cyber warfare. This week has been a wild ride, especially with China's sophisticated cyber operations targeting US infrastructure. Let's dive right in.

One of the most notable attacks comes from the Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon. They've been active since at least 2019 and have been hammering US telecom networks, including a recent breach at Viasat, a major satellite broadband provider. Salt Typhoon's modus operandi is espionage, using unpatched Cisco devices to gain access to critical systems. According to reports, they've accessed US law enforcement wiretap systems and communications of select government officials.

Experts like Jen Easterly, the former director of CISA, emphasize that China's cyber program is a serious threat to US critical infrastructure. These attacks are focused, diligent, patient, stealthy, and highly organized, making them a formidable foe. The US government has been working to enhance its cyber defenses, but there's still a lot of work to be done.

On the flip side, the Trump administration has announced plans to spend $1 billion on offensive cyber operations. This move comes as cybersecurity experts warn that expanding U.S. government hacking could invite retaliation against vulnerable targets like local governments and private companies. Sen. Ron Wyden has expressed concerns about cuts to defensive cybersecurity programs, saying it leaves the country open to attack.

In terms of defensive measures, the White House has issued an executive order pushing for "rules as code" to enhance cybersecurity governance. This means organizations will need to automate compliance and risk management using machine-readable policies.

As we navigate these complex threats, it's clear that collaboration and innovation are key. Whether it's protecting against Salt Typhoon or bolstering our cyber defenses, staying ahead of the game is crucial.

Thanks for tuning in, folks If you want more insights like these, be sure to subscribe. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

Listeners, it’s Ting here, your favorite China-and-cyber-know-it-all, and I hope you’re ready because this past week has been pure Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege—no Hollywood CGI required.

Let’s get right to it. The FBI’s international cyber dragnet nailed Zewei Xu, a 33-year-old Chinese hacker tied to the notorious Silk Typhoon—yep, that’s Hafnium for the cyber sleuths out there. Xu got nabbed at Milan’s airport, fresh off a flight from China, thanks to a U.S. warrant and some impressive Italian police work. U.S. authorities allege Silk Typhoon orchestrated huge espionage campaigns: think hacking COVID-19 vaccine research at the University of Texas, mass phishing that swept up thousands of inboxes, and vacuuming up policy secrets and IP from the bowels of government networks. If extradited, Xu’s looking at decades in U.S. prison, and the message is loud—cyber crooks can run, but the world’s gotten smaller for them.

The method of attack? Expert-level spearphishing, zero-day exploits, and weaponized open-source tools, often disguised as “legit” VPNs or productivity apps uploaded to places as trusted as GitHub. One scheme this week: a so-called free VPN actually siphoned browser cookies, social media creds, and even banking logins straight to command servers in China. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice took down a "bulletproof" hosting provider known for sheltering ransomware and phishing operations—an attack enabler, now missing in action.

Critical infrastructure got plenty of unwanted attention too. Suspected Chinese operatives are believed to have breached email accounts at one of DC’s most powerful law firms, with implications for everything from policy lobbying to energy deals. According to the Atlantic Council’s tech team, these kinds of intrusions make clear that small and medium U.S. businesses remain juicy, soft targets, and our information sharing network needs a serious bandwidth upgrade.

Defensively, agencies moved fast. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added a slew of new vulnerabilities—think Multi-Router Looking Glass, Rails, and Zimbra—to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list, forcing emergency patch cycles nationwide. Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday addressed a whopping 130 flaws, with OT/IT teams merging their operations for unified defense. The Secret Service’s operational failures during last summer’s attempt on President Trump (remember that?) became a rallying cry—if your comms and monitoring tech is old, you’re basically opening the door for attackers.

Expert consensus, from folks like former CISA Director Chris Krebs, is that the U.S. needs more threat hunters and red teamers, not less. The GAO and cybersecurity boardrooms are finally talking risk management in plain language, giving CISOs direct accountability over both digital and operational technology. If your board doesn’t have a cyber expert yet, they’re runnin

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This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

You know it’s been a weird week when your morning coffee is interrupted by General Timothy Haugh from the NSA sounding the cyber-siege alarm—again. In the last few days, Dragon’s Code was very much alive as Chinese cyber operatives dialed up the sophistication in their attacks on US infrastructure. I’m Ting, your favorite China-and-cyber connoisseur, with the scoop on America’s digital battlefield.

The highlight? According to The Wall Street Journal, hackers linked to China managed to penetrate AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies. The suspected prize: not just customer data, but actual wiretap warrant requests—a move straight out of a cyber-thriller. Timothy Haugh confirmed these investigations are fresh, with national security agencies collaborating closely with partners like Microsoft and Mandiant. Attribution here comes from digital forensics, command-and-control infrastructure analysis, and telltale malware usage that screams “Beijing’s in the house.” Of course, the Chinese Embassy denies everything and accuses the US of “politicizing cybersecurity issues”—because what else do you say when caught red-handed?

Attack methodology? Let’s geek out for a second. These incursions don’t just involve old-school phishing—though, let me tell you, Check Point Research spotted a 4000% surge in phishing since generative AI hit the scene. But this week’s headline acts leaned heavily on exploiting zero-day flaws in border devices, abusing remote access, and dropping custom payloads designed specifically to avoid detection. The hackers went after telco backbone systems, giving them access not just to metadata, but the communications most folks assume are untouchable. Some experts, including those from Mandiant, call this “access-as-power”—where stealing data is just the warm-up act for sabotage or strategic intelligence collection.

On defense, CISA and DHS have been hustling. They ramped up cross-sector threat sharing—thank you, CISA 2015, though Congress is cutting it close with reauthorization!—and pushed new rapid-response protocols for telecoms, requiring segmented networks and AI-driven anomaly detection. Oh, and in case you missed it, OpenAI just signed a $200 million deal with the DoD to throw some artificial intelligence muscle into America’s cyber shield. FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel reminded everyone that old-school rules are useless against these new threats, and Congress held marathon hearings pressing agencies on their readiness.

Experts agree the main lesson is bitter but clear: infrastructure is only as strong as its weakest digital link. “China’s cyberspace workforce is the world’s largest,” said General Haugh—think: techies with government budgets and diplomatic cover. The only way to keep up? Total public-private teamwork, regulatory gloves off, and vigilance everywhere from the cloud to the undersea cables connecting Taiwan and beyond. The bipartisan Taiwan Undersea Cabl

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This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

Listeners, Ting here, and let me tell you, if you thought last week’s cyber news cycle was hot, this week turned into a digital dragon dance across America’s critical networks. It’s Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege, and the main character is Xu Zewei, a 33-year-old Chinese national accused of masterminding some of the most sophisticated cyber intrusions the US has seen—right from his former desk at Shanghai Powerock Network Co. Ltd.

This isn’t just keyboard cowboying. Xu, allegedly working at the behest of China’s Ministry of State Security, spearheaded operations involving advanced persistent threat group Silk Typhoon—formerly known as Hafnium. You may remember Silk Typhoon for their notorious mass exploitation of Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities, kicking off in late 2020. With those zero-days, they didn’t just knock on the door; they ripped it off the hinges. The US Department of Justice says the campaign compromised over 60,000 organizations, including research universities and law firms, using web shells for covert, long-term access. Xu and his co-conspirators targeted COVID-19 research at American universities—including the University of Texas—by specifically hacking the email accounts of virologists and immunologists, then reporting their loot back to the Shanghai State Security Bureau.

Nicholas Ganjei, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, called Xu’s arrest in Milan a key moment, but as John Hultquist at Google’s Threat Intelligence Group put it, nabbing one hacker—no matter how skilled—isn’t going to stop Silk Typhoon. This group is large, agile, and government-backed; their campaigns use zero-day exploits and credential harvesting as standard operating procedure, targeting everything from critical infrastructure to legal and healthcare sectors.

Attribution in these ops? Investigators managed to get hold of Xu’s own messages with his superiors, which is the kind of evidence cyber sleuths dream about. But let’s talk defense: US agencies—along with tech giants like Microsoft—rushed to patch vulnerabilities and deploy rapid incident response, while the FBI and DOJ coordinated internationally to make arrests. But the bad news? These ops are run like startups—Silk Typhoon has multiple teams and tons of resources. Their playbook includes outsourcing attacks to private Chinese firms, muddying the attribution waters and making them hard to root out entirely.

Experts, like Annie Fixler at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, warn that America’s best weapon is cooperation—and it’s at risk. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which allows the private sector and government to swap threat intelligence without legal blowback, faces sunset unless Congress acts fast. Without it, sharing knowledge about fresh threats like Silk Typhoon becomes legally dicey—and no one wants that.

The main lesson this week? Sophisticated attackers will keep coming

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This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

Listeners, if you thought your Wi-Fi router was just there to stream The Great British Bake Off, think again. This is Ting, your go-to cyber sleuth, and America just survived another wild week under Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege.

Let’s dive straight into the thick of it. The hottest news: Italian authorities just pinched Xu Zewei, a Chinese national and alleged member of the notorious Hafnium group. Xu stands accused of orchestrating a massive breach on over 60,000 Microsoft Exchange servers and snatching up critical COVID-19 research. The U.S. Justice Department says Xu, while working for Shanghai Powerock Network, not only grabbed top-secret university research in 2020, but also used Exchange vulnerabilities to rifle through small business and government emails nationwide. Hafnium’s fingerprints are all over this: we’re talking identity theft, wire fraud, and—my favorite—deploying new attack campaigns dubbed Silk Typhoon. Nicholas Ganjei from the Southern District of Texas says they've been gunning for Xu for years, and thanks to Italian law enforcement, that day in court is finally coming.

But take it from John Hultquist at Google’s Threat Intelligence Group: this isn’t a movie with a neat ending. Sure, Xu’s arrest makes headlines, but cyber operators are legion—they’ll keep coming, with or without him, because these operations are state-backed and way bigger than any one hacker.

Meanwhile, SecurityScorecard’s STRIKE team just blew open the LapDogs operation—yes, like the pet, but these are no lap puppies. Over 1,000 small office and home office devices—think routers, DVRs, NAS systems—turned into espionage tools, forming a shadowy network called the Operational Relay Box, or ORB. LapDogs leveraged old vulnerabilities with a custom backdoor named ShortLeash, targeting industries from IT to real estate across the U.S. and Asia. This is next-level: attackers use these devices to anonymize traffic, stage more attacks, and exfiltrate data all while flying under the radar. Google’s Mandiant and SentinelOne have both flagged similar tactics as China’s new go-to for hiding state operations in plain sight.

On the defense, U.S. agencies aren’t just patching holes—they’re overhauling strategy. As seen after the Colonial Pipeline hit, investing in resilience is the new mantra. States like Ohio have created the Cyber Reserve, volunteer tech commandos who advise and respond statewide. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has doubled down on pushing regular firmware updates, enforcing strong passwords, disabling unused network services, and isolating IoT devices—because even grandma’s webcam might be a spy.

This week’s top lesson? The modern siege is silent, persistent, and always adapting. Attribution is painstaking, with links running through everything from Chinese-language GitHub repos to “self-patching” attackers who cover their own tracks after explo

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This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

I’m Ting, your favorite tech-savvy, cyber-expert sidekick, and if you were hoping for a zen week in American cybersecurity… well, sorry to disappoint! Let’s crack open “Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege,” because this was a week straight out of a cyber-thriller—starring China’s top digital warriors.

The big players? Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon, two Chinese state-sponsored hacker groups with a penchant for drama and an appetite for critical infrastructure disruption. Let’s talk tactics. These groups went after the backbone of American everyday life: communications, data centers, and even government agencies. We’re not talking “change your password” level snooping here—they were deep inside networks, quietly monitoring, collecting, and, when they felt frisky, seizing access points that could paralyze whole sectors at a moment’s notice.

This week alone, investigations revealed that Salt Typhoon embedded itself within major telecom networks—Comcast and Digital Realty both landed in the crosshairs. Think about it: if you streamed, texted, or made a call, there’s a good chance Chinese operatives could have observed that data in real time! These cyber intruders accessed “lawful intercept” systems—the parts of networks designed to comply with legal surveillance requests. Instead of helping law enforcement, these backdoors turned into open doors for espionage and sabotage. Even high-level government figures like President Trump and Vice President JD Vance weren’t spared; their calls and texts were targets in these sophisticated hacks.

Now, how do we know it was Beijing behind the keyboard? Multiple agencies point to the attack methodologies: signature malware with unique Chinese coding fingerprints, lateral movement that mirrors previous Volt Typhoon operations, and infrastructure links traced right back to China. Hanselman, a top security analyst, bluntly summed it up: these attackers “already have sufficient access into internet infrastructure” and are expanding their reach deeper into datacenters.

As for defense, it’s been an all-hands-on-deck scramble. Companies claimed they’d booted out Salt Typhoon, but Senator Josh Hawley let the cat out of the bag in a Senate hearing—they’re still lurking inside, biding time, watching. In Congress, Chairman Moolenaar called for immediate action, re-introducing the Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act to give agencies more tools and teeth. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, in a budget hearing blitz, admitted these are “the most sophisticated and sustained hacking operations we have ever seen.” The gap? Half a million unfilled cybersecurity jobs, leaving gaping holes in the digital fence.

What did we learn? First, critical infrastructure is now fair game in global power struggles. Second, defense isn’t just tech—it’s people. If you’ve got cyber skills and a hero complex, your country needs you. Until next time, keep

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