A report published on Monday by Chinese cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360 claims that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted an 11-year-long cyberespionage operation aimed at China’s critical industries.
Qihoo’s research revolves around the Vault 7 files published in 2017 by WikiLeaks. The Vault 7 files include exploits and tools used by the CIA to target computers, routers, mobile devices, and IoT systems.
Other cybersecurity firms previously linked these tools and exploits to attacks launched by a threat group tracked as “Longhorn” and “The Lamberts” against entities in Europe, Asia and Africa. Qihoo said its own analysis revealed that many of the Vault 7 tools had been used to target Chinese organizations, even before the files were made public by WikiLeaks.
The targeted Chinese entities are said to include government agencies, scientific research institutions, internet companies, the petroleum sector, and aviation-related organizations, particularly in Beijing, Guangdong and Zhejiang. The Chinese company claims it’s aware of attacks launched by the CIA between September 2008 and June 2019.
“In the CIA's attack against Chinese aviation organizations and scientific research institutions, we found that attackers mainly targeted system developers in these sectors to carry out the campaigns,” Qihoo said in an English-language blog post. “These developers are mainly engaged in works like information technology of civil aviation, such as flight control system, freight information services, settlement and distribution services, passenger information system, etc.”
The company added, “We speculate that in the past eleven years of infiltration attacks, CI ..
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