China Spied on G20

It turned out that Chinese hackers eavesdropped on the machines of 5 European foreign ministries before last September’s G20 Summit, dominated by the Syrian crisis.

The recent research claimed that Chinese hackers infiltrated the ministries’ networks by sending emails to employees with infected files titled like “US_military_options_in_Syria”. The researchers added that for about a week in late August, they could monitor the “inner workings” of the main computer server used by the Chinese hackers. However, they lost access to the intruders after those moved to another server right before the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. The security experts believe that the hackers were ready to start stealing information, though they didn’t actually see them doing so. It is claimed that the hackers’ targets were all members of the EU and the theme of the attacks was US military intervention in Syria.

One of the security specialists preparing the report pointed out that it seemed to indicate something more than just data theft: it seems that the hackers’ intent was to target people involved with the G20.