This is your Red Alert: China's Daily Cyber Moves podcast.

My name’s Ting, your not-so-humble cyber oracle, and wow—have the past few days been a wild ride for China’s covert digital operations. If you thought phishing scams in your inbox were where the story stopped, buckle up—because Red Alert: China’s Daily Cyber Moves just hit a new intensity level.

We start, naturally, with the breach to end all breaches: Knownsec, one of China’s crown-jewel cybersecurity firms tied directly to the government, just had over 12,000 classified documents blown wide open. On November 2, someone swiped files revealing not just the usual catalog of spyware and snooperware, but technical recipes for state-made malware, full source code, and sprawling lists of global targets. The headlines weren’t exaggerating. The breach laid bare juicy detail: for instance, remote access trojans targeting Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, even fancy hardware hacks like a malicious “power bank” that uploads files while charging your phone. You catch my drift: every device a potential spy. While the files stirred up security forums and Twitter, or X if you’re into rebrands, China’s Foreign Ministry basically shrugged, with Mao Ning saying she’d “never heard of Knownsec leaking,” which is about as credible as me claiming I’ve never seen a firewall.

But Knownsec was just the opener. If your organization runs VMware, Cisco, or Exchange—and honestly, who doesn’t—CISA and the FBI spent this week on DEFCON duty. Just in—CISA’s dealt with CVE-2025-41244 (VMware Tools), a critical flaw now actively exploited, mostly attributed to Chinese actors. Unpatched systems could be hijacked for privilege escalation. Cisco Secure Firewall gear is under fire via CVE-2025-20333 and 20362, with new variants causing denial-of-service by making network boxes reboot randomly. Forensics teams have traced IPs back to Chinese-speaking clusters, matching attack DNA from that Knownsec leak. If you see emergency reloads or logs with weird user-agents on your network perimeter, assume it’s active exploitation—patch and segment now.

The pattern this week? Legacy vulnerabilities weaponized anew. American non-profits, research think tanks, and financial systems are all targets. Reports from both Symantec and Carbon Black flagged a China-backed APT using old IIS and Log4j bugs for long-term persistence, siphoning policy intel. Don’t underestimate living-off-the-land: attackers are repurposing genuine IT tools, like the latest campaign using legitimate PDQ Deploy to move Medusa ransomware. Victims see ransom notes galore, crippled endpoints, then a tidy exfiltration of data courtesy of RClone disguised as lsp.exe.

The phishing game is also supercharged: Volexity just ousted China-aligned UTA0388 for “rapport-building phishing,” drawing targets (often US policy or research staff) into lengthy, fake-conversation chains before dropping malware-laden archives. They’re using AI—large language models—to compose emails, even mixing English, Mandarin, and German, plus bizarre payloads, everything from Buddhist chants to porn fragments! GOVERSHELL, the new malware, evolved mid-campaign—starting with command-line basics and zooming to encrypted WebSocket comms.

CISA, NSA, and partners released urgent guidance Thursday: lock down Exchange, update VMware, enable network monitoring for anomalous persistence, and enforce MFA everywhere. Also, threat intelligence streams flagged stealthy attempts to probe voting infrastructure and supply chains, warning that China’s playbook is starting to feel less like isolated espionage and more like dry runs for full-scale disruption.

What’s next? Some forecasters suggest escalation: With AI in the mix, future attacks could become self-improving, targeting both civilian and military domains. Whether it’s deepfake campaigns leading up to the elections, or new wormable exploits automatically weaponized,...

This is your Red Alert: China's Daily Cyber Moves podcast.

I'm Ting—cyber threat watcher, China whisperer, and your digital canary in the coal mine. Straight to it, listeners: the last seventy-two hours have been a blur of keyboards clacking from Guangdong to D.C. The headline? China’s cyber campaigns have dropped subtlety for brute force, poking holes in the U.S. digital armor that keep policymakers and power grids humming.

Friday kicked off with a bang when the Congressional Budget Office, yes, the agency that quietly powers every U.S. spending debate, revealed a breach traced to their ancient Cisco ASA firewall. Multiple sources, including TechCrunch and Federal News Network, confirmed Chinese state-sponsored APTs fingered every soft spot left by unpatched 2024 and 2025 Cisco vulnerabilities. Post-breach, the firewall went dark—classic containment move. Kevin Beaumont, a well-known independent researcher, flagged the weak firewall on Bluesky last month, suggesting the hack may have started back when the CBO was slow-rolling its patch cycle. The real danger? Hackers accessed the chat logs and messages between Congress and policy analysts, potentially giving Beijing a view into pending legislative and economic strategies.

Here’s where the plot thickens: Senate security chiefs quickly warned congressional teams about the heightened risk of incoming spear-phishing, since the attackers could whip up convincing emails using authentic congressional comms. The CBO scrambled to new controls, and the House Budget and Homeland Security Committees got involved—but no one’s confirming exactly what got stolen. Attribution? All arrows point to Chinese APTs, but there’s no public technical proof yet, just the usual nation-state patterns and Congressional finger-pointing.

This isn’t a solo episode for China—meet Salt Typhoon, the state-sponsored group flagged by international intelligence back in July and now officially labeled a national security crisis by the U.S. CISA. Salt Typhoon hit hundreds of companies, drilled through U.S. telecoms like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon in a 2024 blitz, and forced the feds to broadcast emergency mitigation steps: hunt for malicious artifacts, rotate keys, and watch for weird SharePoint POST requests. FBI’s Brett Leatherman couldn’t have put it plainer: China’s hunting for private communications, and the public needs to get its patch game together, fast.

Not to be outdone, July’s Microsoft SharePoint hack reeled in over 400 confirmed organizations, including the National Nuclear Security Administration, when three Chinese groups—Linen Typhoon, Violet Typhoon, and Storm-2603—exploited zero-days just as Microsoft briefed global security partners. The breach started the same day as final notifications to China-based partners. Microsoft responded by kicking Chinese firms out of the advanced vulnerability alert club, stripping them of early security details and proof-of-concept code. The fallout? Proof that international cyber collaboration, without geo-risk controls, is a fire hazard in a dynamite factory.

CISA, as of today, is still firing off urgent alerts about five actively exploited vulnerabilities, urging all critical U.S. infrastructure and government agencies to patch Microsoft, Cisco, and Oracle systems—immediately. The DHS is waving red flags: network defenders should assume compromise and go hunting for subtle signs of persistence by nation-state actors.

Escalation scenarios? If these harvested policy insights or comms logs surface in strategic leaks, or if ransomware pivots to infrastructure disruption, we’re talking DEFCON-level shivers across federal and private sectors. Defensive priorities now: isolate any system stuck on last year’s patch, implement multi-factor authentication, and hound every anomalous login with forensic scrutiny.

That’s your red alert rundown—with Chinese cyber activity against the...

This is your Red Alert: China's Daily Cyber Moves podcast.

It’s Ting here, and if you’re tuning in today, you’ll want to buckle up—because the last 72 hours have been a digital game of whack-a-mole between American defenders and some seriously relentless cyber crews out of China. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty, because it’s not just zero-days and old exploits anymore—it’s persistent espionage, bold new tactics, and, you guessed it, everyone’s favorite alphabet soup of agencies issuing fresh emergency alerts.

Jumping to the headline: Just this week, sources inside both The Washington Post and CNN confirm the U.S. Congressional Budget Office—or CBO, for my policy wonks—was breached by suspected Chinese state hackers. This isn’t some throwaway target; the CBO shapes how Congress thinks about money, and the compromise could mean legislative forecasts, interoffice chats, and high-level negotiations are now part of someone’s Beijing homework. Staffers have been told to avoid any CBO email links, and the Senate’s Sergeant at Arms is overseeing an ongoing clean-up. Clearly, the stakes go way beyond the firewall.

Now, what tactics did these groups use? According to a coalition of reports including from Broadcom’s Symantec and Carbon Black, starting way back in April and extending to just days ago, threat actors like APT41, Kelp, and Space Pirates unleashed a suite of blended attacks against U.S. policy-oriented organizations. First came the mass network scans—think Atlassian OGNL injection, Log4j, Apache Struts, GoAhead RCE—classic Chinese toolkits, but repurposed for an adaptive, multi-vector onslaught. After the initial compromise, these groups didn’t smash-and-grab. Nope, they ran connectivity tests, used “netstat” to map out the network’s arteries, then dropped in automated scheduled tasks using schtasks to keep their beacons alive. They sideloaded DLLs through legit antivirus components, then injected payloads to mimic system processes—and even tried a Dcsync operation to nab domain controller credentials for future lateral movement.

This campaign isn’t an isolated incident. Just two weeks ago, a variant of the attack was used to target U.S. telecoms and industrial control, with the same “tool-sharing” evident across Salt Typhoon, Space Pirates, and their APT41 cousins. According to The Hacker News, these actors even exploited the notorious WinRAR zero-day, and deployed remote access trojans and custom loaders to stay undetected for weeks at a time.

CISA and the FBI have both released new guidance: Patch the usual suspects—Microsoft Exchange, VMware Tools, WinRAR, and basically any system where you haven’t closed old CVEs. Multi-factor authentication is now “mandatory, not optional,” and endpoint monitoring must be set to “paranoid.” Emergency alerts say watch lateral movement: if you see excessive scheduled task creation, system-level persistence, or odd traffic pinging command-and-control servers, pull the plug and escalate.

Here’s your quick Tuesday-to-Friday timeline: Congressional Budget Office breach detected—emergency advisory; tech-specific exploits light up in white-hat honeypots by Wednesday; by Thursday, confirmation from U.S. officials suggests attribution to Chinese state groups; today, new patches and hardening guidance drop, and incident response is ongoing—while staffers, for good measure, are told to pause internal comms just in case.

If you’re wondering about escalation, the playbook here is all about persistent access—not noisy destruction, at least not yet. But as tensions ratchet up, a compromised CBO or policy think tank could flip from mere reconnaissance to sabotage if diplomatic red lines are crossed.

That wraps your daily Red Alert—Ting style. Thanks for tuning in. Don’t forget to subscribe, and remember: in the cat-and-mouse cyber chase, staying patched and paranoid is your best bet. This has been a quiet please...

This is your Red Alert: China's Daily Cyber Moves podcast.

Today’s November 5th, 2025, and guess what—Red Alert is back! I’m Ting, and trust me, you’re going to want to hear this cyber rundown, because China’s been busy and our firewalls are sweating bullets. Let’s skip the pleasantries and hit the juicy stuff.

This morning, I was jolted awake by my phone screeching with a new CISA emergency alert: active exploitation of the Gladinet cloud file manager and Control Web Panel flaws, both now on CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Picture this: CVE-2025-11371 in Gladinet got a 7.5 out of 10 on the pain scale, but that’s nothing next to the CWP headline-grabber—remote command execution, unauthenticated. If you’re running unpatched panels, Chinese state-linked operators could be rooting around in your system before you’re even done with your coffee. This is not random—Security Week warned yesterday that CISA flagged these vulnerabilities because of proven, in-the-wild abuse, with US infrastructure as the main entrée.

Just after noon, I checked in with the FBI’s InfraGard portal—always a thrill. Multiple agencies, from healthcare networks in Illinois to financial apps tied to Silicon Valley, reported unexplained outbound traffic spikes, some traced back to known Chinese APT infrastructure. What’s their tactic? An old favorite: supply chain hits, targeting third-party vendors to leapfrog straight into big fish networks.

Let’s dial back 24 hours—Tuesday night, the US Cybersecurity Center was humming about the “Trinity of Chaos,” a new, unholy merger between Scattered Spider, LAPSUS$, and ShinyHunters. Trustwave confirmed that this cybercrime Justice League has amped coordination with China-derived toolkits, meaning our homegrown ransomware artists are blending backdoors straight out of Beijing’s cookbook. Telegram’s try-hard moderation hasn’t dented their channel count—they just pop up under new names and keep trading access like Pokémon cards.

CISA and the FBI have been scrambling out advisories—all hands on deck! Every US business should be tracking CISA’s Known Exploited list, patching Gladinet, CWP, broadening logs, running outbound scan rules, and segmenting mission-critical systems right now. Oh, and watch your backups—several compromised orgs reported attackers quietly staging in place, “prepositioning,” as the Stimson Center points out, ready to hold key infrastructure for ransom or sabotage if the US and China’s trade dance gets any messier.

About escalation: If today’s pattern holds, you’d better believe the next move could be more than data theft. With rare earth negotiations tense and reciprocal tariffs back in the news, these prepositioned attacks could be activated, threatening major US utilities or financial systems—classic multi-domain deterrence straight from China’s playbook.

I’ll leave you with this: patch, isolate, rehearse your incident response, and don’t sleep on the emergency advisories. Thanks for tuning in—make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss the next breach. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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This is your Red Alert: China's Daily Cyber Moves podcast.

It’s Ting, and—wow, things are sizzling in cyberspace lately! No time for a slow intro, so let’s dive headlong into China’s latest cyber moves against US targets, because, trust me, it’s not quiet out there.

The biggest signal flare right now: Ribbon Communications, the telecom backbone provider, just confirmed a major breach by nation-state hackers, heavily suspected to be China. The kicker? The attackers wormed in as early as December last year, staying tucked away in the network for nearly nine months before anyone noticed it. They grabbed corporate IT access, historic customer data, and potentially reached US government communications. That’s not small fries—Ribbon ties together global voice and data, so we’re talking critical infrastructure being exposed on multiple levels.

The team at Palo Alto Networks spotted a China-nexus threat cluster, CL SDA-1009, dropping Airstalk malware variants. If you’re not familiar, that’s malware specifically targeting VMware AirWatch and Workspace ONE mobile device management, which are popular for remote workforce setups. The Chinese actors pilfered stolen code-signing certificates and quietly exploited trusted APIs to vacuum up browser histories, screenshots, and credentials. It’s all about stealth—this operation barely tickles the regular malware sensors. Supply chain espionage at its finest, especially as the main targets are business process outsourcing providers. China’s hacking playbook here? Compromise one vendor, leapfrog into dozens of client networks.

On top of that, Chinese-linked groups are exploiting two chained vulnerabilities, CVE-2025-20362 and CVE-2025-20333, in Cisco ASA and FTD devices, giving them authentication bypass and remote code execution powers. Targets range from local government agencies in the US to financial sector organizations in Europe and Asia. They’re creating rogue admin accounts and suppressing logs, making deep persistence look easy. CISA and the FBI didn’t mince words—emergency alerts landed hard, and agencies nationwide scrambled to patch or even rip out aging ASA 5500 series hardware.

Last month was a hurricane of ransomware and new data breaches, with supply chain attacks cutting through organizations like Motility Software Solutions and F5 Networks. Notably, Chinese actor cluster UNC5221 hit F5’s BIG-IP development environment, making off with source code and crucial vulnerability information. That put even federal networks at “imminent threat” according to CISA’s emergency directive.

As for right now, the volatility reading for these threats is off the charts—expect more emergency bulletins if defensive measures lag. The required defensive actions? Log and alert on strange API calls (especially in AirWatch and Workspace ONE), force reauthentication, restrict vendor access, and patch firewalls as if your coffee break depended on it.

Escalation scenario? If these footholds in telecom and supply chain environments become operational, think mass credential theft and disruption of voice/data traffic, potentially impacting emergency services. The threat actors aren’t spiking malware—this is about deep persistence, quiet movement, and using legitimate channels like admin credentials to lurk until the big strike.

Stay frosty and don’t ignore your SOC alerts. Share intel—standardization and open info-sharing are key, just ask Jason Keirstead from LangGuard.AI, who says collective defense is the only way to make attackers double-think their tactics.

Thanks for tuning in—subscribe for more if you want to stay ahead of the next cyber storm. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

For more http://www.quietplease.ai


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