A major leak has exposed the entire sub-naked cognitive war between countries.
Researchers from Taiwan have discovered a major leak of classified documents. Thanks to the incident, large-scale operations of the Chinese Communist Party to wage "cognitive warfare" against the island. Details became known after the release of a documentary by the Japanese television company NHK.
Employees of TeamT5, a company engaged in malware research and cybersecurity, went on the trail of the leak after they found suspicious URLs on the social network X. According to experts, these accounts could have been created by hackers or informants.
During the investigation, experts gained access to 577 documents belonging to the Shanghai-based organization iSoon. The organization traded in the sale of hacker data to the Chinese government, intelligence agencies and state-owned enterprises.
The materials contained detailed instructions on how to conduct cyberattacks, including ways to hack Microsoft and Google email accounts, as well as manuals for remote control of smartphones. Of particular interest are the more than 16,000 messages from internal chats of iSoon employees, which show how closely the company is connected to the Chinese security forces and military.
Most of the documents concerned Taiwan: personal data of citizens with names, addresses and phone numbers, detailed information about road infrastructure and architectural models of Taiwanese cities.
The correspondence of iSoon employees mentioned the National University of Zhengzhi (NCCU). Later it turned out that hackers broke into the university's server and tried to gain access to the mail of teachers who cooperated with government agencies. According to the National High Performance Computing Center, the attackers used the NCCU server as a staging post to access more important data in Taiwan.
TeamT5 experts confirmed that the IP addresses from the iSoon documents coincide with those previously used by Chinese hackers already known to many countries. Moreover, iSoon provided technical support for malware operated by the infamous Chinese hacking group APT41.
The documents also showed how information warfare works. A striking example is the disinformation campaign about the government's plans to attract workers from India.
On the popular Taiwanese forum Dcard, a provocative publication appeared "Admission of 100,000 Indian workers will turn Taiwan into an island of sexual violence". The post sparked a wave of protests among young women. Specialists from the Taipei laboratory Doublethink, which tracks disinformation, took up the analysis of this case. Analyst Lin Feng-Kai noted that the very choice of words in publications calling on Taiwan to refuse to cooperate with India betrays the Chinese origin of the authors.
The success of this operation clearly shows how effective China's cognitive warfare strategy is, aimed at manipulating public opinion and dividing Taiwanese society.
Source
Researchers from Taiwan have discovered a major leak of classified documents. Thanks to the incident, large-scale operations of the Chinese Communist Party to wage "cognitive warfare" against the island. Details became known after the release of a documentary by the Japanese television company NHK.
Employees of TeamT5, a company engaged in malware research and cybersecurity, went on the trail of the leak after they found suspicious URLs on the social network X. According to experts, these accounts could have been created by hackers or informants.
During the investigation, experts gained access to 577 documents belonging to the Shanghai-based organization iSoon. The organization traded in the sale of hacker data to the Chinese government, intelligence agencies and state-owned enterprises.
The materials contained detailed instructions on how to conduct cyberattacks, including ways to hack Microsoft and Google email accounts, as well as manuals for remote control of smartphones. Of particular interest are the more than 16,000 messages from internal chats of iSoon employees, which show how closely the company is connected to the Chinese security forces and military.
Most of the documents concerned Taiwan: personal data of citizens with names, addresses and phone numbers, detailed information about road infrastructure and architectural models of Taiwanese cities.
The correspondence of iSoon employees mentioned the National University of Zhengzhi (NCCU). Later it turned out that hackers broke into the university's server and tried to gain access to the mail of teachers who cooperated with government agencies. According to the National High Performance Computing Center, the attackers used the NCCU server as a staging post to access more important data in Taiwan.
TeamT5 experts confirmed that the IP addresses from the iSoon documents coincide with those previously used by Chinese hackers already known to many countries. Moreover, iSoon provided technical support for malware operated by the infamous Chinese hacking group APT41.
The documents also showed how information warfare works. A striking example is the disinformation campaign about the government's plans to attract workers from India.
On the popular Taiwanese forum Dcard, a provocative publication appeared "Admission of 100,000 Indian workers will turn Taiwan into an island of sexual violence". The post sparked a wave of protests among young women. Specialists from the Taipei laboratory Doublethink, which tracks disinformation, took up the analysis of this case. Analyst Lin Feng-Kai noted that the very choice of words in publications calling on Taiwan to refuse to cooperate with India betrays the Chinese origin of the authors.
The success of this operation clearly shows how effective China's cognitive warfare strategy is, aimed at manipulating public opinion and dividing Taiwanese society.
Source
