China's Cyber Black Friday: How Beijing Turned Your Power Grid Into Their Personal Shopping Cart cover art

China's Cyber Black Friday: How Beijing Turned Your Power Grid Into Their Personal Shopping Cart

China's Cyber Black Friday: How Beijing Turned Your Power Grid Into Their Personal Shopping Cart

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

Hey listeners, Ting here, your go-to cyber sleuth on all things China and hacks. Buckle up, because the past week has been a red-alert frenzy with Chinese APTs burrowing deeper into US critical infrastructure like it's Black Friday at a data buffet.

Flash back to Friday, January 16th: Cisco Talos drops a bombshell on UAT-8837, a China-nexus crew exploiting a Sitecore zero-day to infiltrate North American power grids, water systems, and transit hubs. These stealthy operators, overlapping tactics with Volt Typhoon, have been prepositioning malware since last year—think silent footholds ready to flip the switch on cities during a Taiwan flare-up. Same day, Cisco patches CVE-2025-20393, a zero-day RCE in their Secure Email Gateways hammered by another China-linked APT, UAT-9686. Email gateways down? That's your C-suite's inbox turned spy dropbox.

Fast-forward to yesterday's congressional fireworks: Army Lt. Gen. Joshua M. Rudd, incoming Cyber Command boss and NSA director, tells the Senate Armed Services Committee China's the top cyber dog—well-resourced, integrated with PLA goals, laser-focused on our grids, finance, and comms. He paints Volt Typhoon as the poster child: Chinese state actors nesting in US water, power, and transit nets, prepping to hold American communities hostage. Rudd warns of unprecedented speed in Beijing's cyber tech via IP theft and state cash dumps. No deterrence yet—China knows peacetime nukes on infra would spark US fury, but they're testing grayer zones daily.

Timeline ramps up: Two days pre-Rudd, House Homeland Security hears Joe Lin of Twenty Technologies roast US restraint—Salt Typhoon gutted AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile; past hauls like Anthem's 79 million health records, Marriott's 383 million passports, Equifax's 145 million finances, and OPM's 22 million SF-86 clearance files give PRC a counterintel goldmine. Emily Harding from CSIS chimes in: Cyber Command's offensive chops are unmatched, but Washington's "norms and sanctions" playbook invites escalation. Lin nails it—adversaries see low costs, so they climb.

New patterns? Stealthier prepositioning, zero-days in Sitecore and Cisco gear, blending espionage with sabotage prep. CISA/FBI echoes FBI-CISA's 2024 Volt Typhoon alert—hunt for living-off-the-land tools in your ICS. Defensive must-dos: Patch Sitecore and Cisco AsyncOS now, hunt anomalous lateral movement in OT nets, deploy EDR for pre-positioned beacons, and drill air-gapped segmentation. Cyber Command's eroding footholds via persistent hunts—join 'em.

Escalation scenarios? Crisis over Taiwan: Lights out in LA, NYC transit paralyzed, economic chaos. Peacetime? Disinfo floods or subtle grid flickers to test nerves. Beijing's 15th Five-Year Plan juices military cyber, so expect AI-augmented ops by 2030.

Stay vigilant, listeners—harden those perimeters or pay the pipers. Thanks for tuning in—subscribe for more intel drops! This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease.ai.

For more http://www.quietplease.ai


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