China's Cyber Offensives Built in Lockstep With Private Firms, Academia

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Hundreds of private cybersecurity firms, technology services providers, and universities are helping China’s state apparatus develop offensive cyber capabilities to support the country’s strategic military, economic, and geopolitical goals, according to research released this week.

“The existence of state-sponsored threat groups operating under the Chinese state’s direction has long been well documented,” researchers at France’s Orange Cyberdefense wrote in their report, based on eight months of analysis of China’s cyber-offense capabilities. But any notions that these entities are strictly in government hands, especially given the authoritarian nature of China’s government, are off base, the authors warned. “China’s offensive cyber capabilities are, in fact, supported by a complex and multilayered ecosystem involving a broad array of state and non-state actors,” they wrote.

Their findings provide deeper context on the troubling success that Chinese cyber actors have had infiltrating US critical infrastructure, breaching government, military, and business networks, not to mention theft of defense data, trade secrets, and intellectual property from American entities and others around the world.

An Extensive Ecosystem

The synergies have enabled quicker government access to cutting-edge technology and talent, especially in critical areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics, 5G wireless, and cloud computing, says Dan Ortega, security strategist at Anomali. “China’s collaboration between its tech companies and state entities has dramatically accelerated the development of its cyber-offensive capabilities,” Ortega says. Importantly, it has also allowed the nation to scale state-sponsored cyber missions effectively. And that collaboration enables government access to vast data sets collected by companies, facilitating enhanced targeting and more-effective cyberattacks, he notes.

“China fosters formal and informal partnerships with tech firms through initiatives like the Military-Civil Fusion strategy, mandating companies to share their technological advancements and insights with the state,” he says. A feedback loop exists in which innovations made in the private sector directly enhance state capabilities.

Poised to Strike?

The Orange report arrives as domestic concerns grow over Chinese cyberattacks on US entities, such as operations like Volt Typhoon’s targeting of critical infrastructure organizations. Many in government and industry are convinced that Chinese groups have attained the presence they need on US networks to cause widespread disruption to domestic energy, telecommunications utilities, and technology services. Such concerns prompted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to describe China as the “most active and persistent cyber threat to US government, private sector, and critical infrastructure networks,” in its 2024 annual report.

Orange’s research showed the four main government stakeholders responsible for building and executing China’s cyber-offense capabilities are the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Their multipronged efforts include actively recruiting or otherwise supporting private hackers and hacktivists in activities such as data theft, website defacement, and distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Hundreds of Private Firms

Under the current model, the government stakeholders are working with hundreds of private companies, both big and small, to carry out cyberattacks against foreign and domestic entities that are of strategic interest to Beijing, the Orange report noted. One example of big-player involvement in the report is Shanghai stock exchange-listed Integrity Technology Group (ITG), which the FBI has linked to the Flax Typhoon APT. Like ITG, many of China’s top technology companies are also the state’s biggest cyber contractors, according to Orange’s report. “Enterprises such as ThreatBook, Qihoo360, and Qi An Xin not only provide defensive security solutions to public agencies but are also believed to indirectly contribute to offensive cyber operations.”

At the other end of the spectrum are dozens of smaller and medium-size private entities that often act as subcontractors for the bigger companies and deliver a range of highly specialized services. One example is i-Soon, a 72-person Shanghai firm whose ties to the Chinese government emerged after a leak earlier this year. “These entities often act as subcontractors to the industry giants, filling the gap in their cyber offensive competencies and further fragmenting the hack-for-hire supply chain,” Orange’s researchers wrote. The company found that while in many instances, China’s PLA, MSS, and others worked with legitimate private entities, others created shell companies that acted as fronts for procuring cyberattack infrastructure.

Tapping Top Universities

The Chinese government’s efforts to rope in academic institutions began in earnest in 2017. Today many universities — including eight of the C9 League of China’s top nine public universities — are engaged in state-sponsored cyber-offense research, according to Orange. Their contributions range from advanced research on the use of AI in cybersecurity to helping state operatives translate stolen documents and gathering open source intelligence.

Trey Ford, chief information security officer at Bugcrowd, says the willingness among Chinese companies to work for the government point up very different business norms in China. While organizations in countries like the US are beholden to fiduciary, legal, ethical, and privacy norms, those in China have a different set of obligations. “Communist government-backed organizations, aligned to formal Five-Year economic and military objectives, will have very different outcomes in mind, and can make different investments and sacrifices than capitalist businesses,” he says.

Customer trust and user privacy are different context in China than in the US and other western nations, Ford says. “Companies doing business in China must run their services in-country today. This includes the expectation of access to their systems, data, intellectual property — as well as their customers’ data.”

The continued expansion of China’s cyber ecosystem will lead to more sophisticated attacks and better targeting of intellectual property and critical infrastructure through trusted business relationships, cautions Stephen Kowski, field chief technology officer at SlashNext Email Security+. “This model could enable more advanced supply chain compromises and social engineering attacks that bypass traditional security controls,” Kowski says. “China’s civil-military fusion model creates a seamless flow of technology and expertise between private sector innovations and state-sponsored cyber operations, enabling faster deployment of advanced attack techniques.”

About the Author

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop, Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a Master’s degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.