CIA accused of using powerful cyberweapons against China and other countries, report reveals

China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre (CVERC) and cybersecurity company 360 jointly released a report yesterday, accusing the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of using powerful cyberweapons to attack other countries, including China. The report claims that the CIA has orchestrated “peaceful evolution” and “colour revolutions” worldwide through superior technology.

The report concentrated on numerous cyberattacks within China. Investigators said they had captured and extracted a significant number of Trojan programs, functional plug-ins, and attack platform samples connected to the CIA, exposing a US-controlled “empire of hackers.” According to the report, the CIA’s cyberweapons employed state-of-the-art espionage technology in closely connected and integrated attacks.

The investigators revealed that the cyberweapons were subject to strict, standardised, and professional software engineering management, a unique practice followed by the CIA in developing cyberattack weapons. The report stated…

“These cyberweapons have now covered almost all Internet and Internet of Things (IoT) assets globally, allowing control over foreign networks and theft of vital, sensitive data at any time.”

The cyberattacks have targeted critical information infrastructure, aerospace, research institutions, oil and petrochemical industries, large Internet companies, and government agencies in various countries. These attacks can be traced back to 2011 and have continued until today.

The collected information from foreign governments, companies, and citizens is then provided to US decision-makers for national security intelligence and security risk assessments. The report also said that the CIA carried out and supervised secret cross-border activities at the request of the US president.

Furthermore, the report claimed that, for decades, the CIA had overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 legitimate foreign governments, with only seven instances being acknowledged by the CIA. This caused turmoil in the affected countries.

While assisting other countries in inciting unrest, the CIA allegedly provided various information and communication technologies and even on-site command help. One example was a US military-affiliated company that developed untraceable TOR technology to help protesters in certain Middle Eastern countries maintain communication and evade tracking and arrest. The servers encrypted all information passing through them, ensuring anonymous internet access for specific users.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning stated yesterday…

“The CIA has long been collecting intelligence information from foreign governments, companies, and citizens, and organising, implementing and supervising cross-border secret activities while engaging in continuous espionage and theft.”

Mao added that the international community should be highly vigilant of such activities and insisted that the US should pay attention and respond to international concerns, and stop using cyberweapons for worldwide espionage and cyberattacks.

In recent years, Beijing has increasingly accused the United States of cyberattacks.

In June 2022, China’s Northwestern Polytechnical University issued a public statement claiming it had been targeted by overseas cyberattacks. A report by CVERC that followed in September highlighted that the US National Security Agency had carried out tens of thousands of malicious cyberattacks against Chinese targets in recent years, controlling numerous network devices such as servers, terminals, switches, telephone exchanges, routers, and firewalls.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency reciprocated by releasing an advisory on their website in October 2022, emphasising the cybersecurity threat from China.