This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here, your go-to gal for all things China cyber chaos and hacker hijinks. Picture this: it's the tail end of 2025, and America's infrastructure is getting dragon-roasted by Beijing's slickest state-sponsored crews. We're talking Salt Typhoon, that notorious Chinese APT gang, who've been burrowing into U.S. telecom giants like Verizon and AT&T since at least August, lurking for up to two years according to FBI disclosures. These sneaky operators hit nine major providers, slurping up wiretap data and call records—pure espionage gold. But they're not stopping there; CISA, NSA, and FBI joint alerts flag them infiltrating energy grids, water systems, and transportation hubs, all prepping for a "typhoon strategy" cyber Pearl Harbor, as the Washington Post lays out in their deep dive on CCP blueprints.

Fast-forward to this week, and it's escalating like a bad sequel. Chinese-nexus wolves UNC6512 and Storm-1849 are blasting CVE-2025-59287 in Microsoft WSUS servers—over 100,000 exploit attempts in a single week, per Vectr's threat forecast. That's remote code execution at SYSTEM level on half a million vulnerable boxes, letting them push ShadowPad malware for intel grabs and backdoors that survive firmware updates. Cisco ASA firewalls? They're chowing down on CVE-2025-20333 too, via CISA's Emergency Directive 25-03, mandated federal patches stat. Victims span 12 federal agencies, 11 state governments, defense contractors like those in the DIB, big banks, and critical infra from power plants to comms towers. Pentagon's annual China report nails it: Chinese cyberattacks spiked 150% in 2024, with Salt Typhoon as exhibit A, blurring war and peace.

Methodologies? Zero-days, crafted auth cookies for WSUS entry, ArcaneDoor persistence implants, and supply-chain tricks via MSPs—turning one vuln into enterprise Armageddon. Attribution's ironclad: tool overlap with known PRC APTs, victim picks screaming strategic espionage, says Vectr. Defenses kicking in? Actelis Networks is hustling 256-bit MACsec encryption to harden legacy traffic lights and utilities overnight, dodging multi-year rebuilds. House Homeland Security notes 70% of 2024 attacks hit crit infra, with 300% jumps in energy and finance hits. Experts like Senate Commerce witnesses roast unpatched gear and weak controls; CISA pushes anomaly-detecting AI layers.

Lessons? Patch like your grandma's on Black Friday—prioritize WSUS, Cisco, FortiGate vulns. Immutable backups, zero-trust, tabletop drills to cut recovery chaos, as CM-Alliance preaches post-ransomware nightmares. House panels urge execution over talk; it's not hypothetical anymore.

Thanks for tuning in, listeners—subscribe for more cyber spice! This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease.ai.

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This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI