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GCSB: NZ aware of Chinese cyber attacks 'for a number of years'

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Tue, 20 Jul 2021, 4:43PM
Photo / File
Photo / File

GCSB: NZ aware of Chinese cyber attacks 'for a number of years'

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Tue, 20 Jul 2021, 4:43PM

China has hit back at New Zealand after accusations of Chinese-sponsored hacking going on.

Late Monday night, GCSB Minister Andrew Little said New Zealand had established links between Chinese state-sponsored actors known as Advanced Persistent Threat 40 (APT40) and malicious cyber activity in New Zealand.

Little has called on China to stop the hacking.

Beijing responded, saying the claims are lies, slander and ridiculous, and have threatened devastating consequences if the rhetoric continues.

Andrew Hampton, the Director-General at the GCSB, told Heather du Plessis Allan New Zealand has been aware for several years about malicious activity by the Chinese ministry.

"In 2018 the New Zealand Government called them out for a compromise of a range of global managed service provides, which they used to get to customers.

"If you look at the Minister's statement it's actually talking about two related things - the first is an ongoing campaign that is a whole range of attacks that have been underway for a number of years, and then there's specifically the compromise of the Microsoft exchange which occurred at the start of the year.

Hampton says the attribution process undertaken took some weeks to confirm who was responsible for the attacks.

"The New Zealand Government has raised with the Chinese embassy its concerns about this malicious cyber activity. The decision to go now and speak publically about this is driven by a couple of things - firstly that formal attribution process needed to be complete, but also to have as big as an effect as possible New Zealand wanted to make it a statement at the same time as a range of other like-minded countries did," Hampton adds.

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