The third installment of our “Big Four” series on China is filled with
so much great information that it’s our longest episode yet. Lloyd
Brown, Principal Analyst for our Custom Intel Team, and Scott
Henderson, Principal Analyst for our Cyber Espionage Team, joined our
host, Luke McNamara to peel back the layers of China’s cyber
capabilities.

Similar to past episodes in this series, we started at the beginning
of China’s cyber operations—dating back to 2003. Scott and Lloyd took
us through a detailed look at all the stages of China’s operations,
including the shift in 2015/2016 from being “clumsy and noisy” to
stealthy. Lloyd brings up a great point that’s worth hearing about
their use of CVE exploits (which came into play with the recent
Microsoft Exchange server exploits).

We also discussed how China’s cyber activity is driven by economic
interests such as the Belt and Road initiative, the nature of their
operations surrounding global elections, APT41’s cybercrime activity
in addition to cyber espionage, and where they think China’s
operations are headed. You’ll definitely want to stick around to the
very end. Since our initial recording occurred before the Microsoft
Exchange exploits, Luke decided to follow up with Lloyd to get his
take on HAFNIUM and the UNC groups we’re tracking related to that
activity.



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