State-sponsored Chinese crims targeted India with tax and COVID phishing

Blackberry's Research and Intelligence Team has uncovered three phishing schemes targeting Indian nationals, and says a Chinese state-sponsored malware gang is the culprit. Blackberry identified the responsible party as APT41 – a prolific Chinese state-sponsored cyberthreat group that has carried out what Fireye called " …

[x 7]

Time to impose a second "Great Firewall of China" - this time an external one blocking all external government / business / potentially criminal / suspect / banking traffic.

Isolate them

[AMBxx]

I have a list of countries excluded from all email communication and blocked from our website. Needless to say, China were the first on the list.

Sadly, I realise it's easy to get around with a VPN or a hacked source, but it excludes a lot of automated hacking attempts.

[Helcat]

As the more competent hacker will use a VPN to hide their location - that firewall rule isn't much help :(

Now, if we had infinite monkeys trained with infinite diggers and several rogue meteors we could direct at specific satellites... we'd be out of bananas before we'd cut China off properly :(

[AMBxx]

No doubt they could. Fortunately, most of the hacking attempts are just automated scripts looking for an easy mark.

[Clausewitz 4.0]

The scope and size of activities made by others is only a fraction of those perpetrated by 5-eyes.

Its necessary to keep the balance.

[Potemkine!]

It won't work, because China has enough client states to bypass such a blockade.

[martinusher]

But I get bothered by Indian Nationals all the time.

Whenever I get a phone or network scam these days there's invariably an Indian behind it. They obviously pretend to be genuine 'merkans working for the IRS or Social Security or whatever but there are obvious tells (quite apart from the really obvious ones that a) the government doesn't randomly call people and b) they know who you are anyway so they don't need to address you as 'taxpayer'). The scammers are actually quote open and friendly if tackled, its just their job, nothing personal, and they'll quickly move on once they realize your not a good target. (They've got quotas to fill....)

So some Indians have received scam calls or phishes. It might be some nefarious national actor -- obviously in today's Cold War climate it just has to be 'state sponsored' by 'them' -- but it could also just as easily be people who are absolutely fed up with India's lack of responsiveness to this issue. Judging from what Internet sleuths have found out it looks like that provided the correct palms are greased any enforcement will be just for the cameras, nothing else. So, frankly, they deserve it. The higher up the pecking order, the better.