Chinas Cyber Dragons Unleashed: Hacking, Attacking & AI-Fueled Disinformation Galore!

This is your Digital Dragon Watch: Weekly China Cyber Alert podcast. Listeners, Ting here, reporting in with your Digital Dragon Watch: Weekly China Cyber Alert, coming at you straight from the frontline of cyber chaos—and trust me, this week the dragons were anything but asleep. China-linked hackers have been busy, with the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre confirming a sharp surge in malicious activity. Paul Chichester said that China is using cyber attacks for strategic intelligence, and new NCSC figures show a 50% spike in nationally significant attacks across 2025, much of it targeting critical infrastructure, telecoms, and large business networks. To add spice, hostile states are leveraging artificial intelligence—not for brand-new attack paradigms just yet, but to supercharge and automate their old favorite tricks, making defense a real headache. The attack techniques just keep evolving. Take the headline-grabbing breach at F5 Networks—a trusted supplier for U.S. federal agencies and 85% of the Fortune 500. Hackers, suspected to be state-backed (and yes, China is always on the shortlist), maintained “long-term, persistent access” inside F5’s development environment, snatching up source code and customer configuration files. Nick Andersen at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) called this a supply chain risk with potentially catastrophic downstream effects; CISA issued an emergency directive for agencies to identify, patch, or disconnect any exposed F5 devices by October 31. The playbook here: infiltrate enterprise platforms, steal vulnerability data, and potentially weaponize it for broader supply chain exploit waves. Sound familiar? SolarWinds, anyone? Meanwhile, on Taiwan’s front lines, Tsai Ming-yen—Director-General of the National Security Bureau—reported over three million daily Chinese cyberattacks hammering government systems. The CCP isn’t just looking for intelligence; they’re now pumping out forged documents and deep-fake disinformation via dark web channels, aiming to erode public confidence in digital defenses. So, this is no longer just malware and backdoors, but full-spectrum influence ops using social networks and media to foment distrust. Even Russia isn’t immune—Symantec and The Hacker News spotlighted the Chinese group “Jewelbug” quietly infiltrating a Russian IT provider for months. Jewelbug isn’t messing around: we’re talking renamed Microsoft debugging tools for stealth, credential theft, cloud-based exfiltration via Yandex, and supply chain compromise attempts. If you’re tracking threat evolution, note the use of Microsoft Graph API and OneDrive to blend C2 traffic in with the good stuff, muddying the forensic waters. Over in the U.S., government response was swift but probably not swift enough. Senator Bill Cassidy called out vulnerabilities from Cisco—another critical infrastructure giant recently targeted by hostile actors. The Senate HELP Committee is probing the risks and pushing f This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.