China’s National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin has been hit by a massive cyber attack, with more than 10 petabytes of sensitive information stolen.
A hacker alias FlemingChina claims to have stolen a huge trove of confidential data, including classified defense documents and research papers.
The National Supercomputing Center serves as a hub, opened in 2009 and also supports more than 6,000 customers, including defense agencies and aerospace firms such as AVIC and COMAC, and civilian scientific research groups.
sensitive information at stake
The hacker entered through a compromised VPN, using a botnet to extract classified defense documents and data such as missile and bomb schematics, aerospace and aviation research, and bioinformatics and fusion simulation data.
Now, the hacker is selling a preview and full access to thousands of cryptocurrencies on Telegram, claiming it includes “research in a variety of fields including aerospace engineering, military research, bioinformatics, fusion simulation and more.”
Cyber experts who reviewed the posted samples called them “authentic” and noted that the hacker was gaining access to the documents with “comparative ease,” CNN reports.
The intruder reportedly maintained access for several months and extracted massive datasets without turning on internal detection systems.
“They are exactly what I would expect to see from a supercomputing center,” said Dakota Carey, a consultant at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne who focuses on China.
He said, “There have been some leaks from China’s cyber ecosystem that I’m familiar with that sold very quickly. I’m sure there are a lot of governments globally that are interested in some of the NSCC data, but many of those governments that are interested may already have the data.”
For those unaware, one petabyte (PB) is equal to 1,000 terabytes (TB). Since a modern, high-spec laptop typically comes with a 1TB hard drive, one would need 1,000 of those laptops just to hold one petabyte of data.
The recent data breach is the largest known theft of data from China, posing a potential security crisis.
