Chinese Hackers Plant Digital Sleeper Cells in Telecom Backbone

Researchers at Rapid 7 have uncovered evidence of an advanced China-nexus threat actor, Red Menshen, placing stealthy digital sleeper cells in telecommunications networks to carry out high-level espionage, including against government networks.

Rapid 7 has a blog post on this here: https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/tr-bpfdoor-telecom-networks-sleeper-cells-threat-research-report/

Lieutenant General Ross Coffman (U.S. Army, Ret.) who currently serves as President of Forward Edge-AI, provided the following comment:

“Chinese hackers caught deep in the backbone of telecommunications infrastructure are doing so for high-level espionage.

Anyone that’s surprised by this news should be embarrassed. This is not the end nor the beginning. We’re in a fight to protect our data. PWC technologies that protect data inflight need to be deployed across verticals to protect the US and the free world against China and other malicious actors.”

This shows how far threat actors are willing to go to execute whatever plans that they have. This is crafty and stealthy and dangerous. Defenders should bear that in mind.

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