Northwestern Polytechnical University hit by NSA cyberattack
Debunking the Hypocrisy of The Matrix
Our reporter Li Yunshu Xue Peng Chai Yaxin
The evidence is conclusive, the real culprit is the National Security Agency!
On September 5, the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and 360 Company released investigation reports on Northwestern Polytechnical University being attacked by the US National Security Agency. More than 40 different exclusive network attack weapons continue to attack Northwestern Polytechnical University, stealing core technical data such as the school's key network equipment configuration, network management data, and operation and maintenance data.
As the country with the most powerful network technology, the United States, under the guise of "national interests", violates international law and basic norms of international relations, ignores basic morality and trustworthiness, and conducts large-scale network theft and surveillance of other countries, seriously damaging other countries' national security and Citizens' personal information security.
The various acts of "cyberbullying" major powers have exposed that the United States is the culprit behind the insecurity of global cyberspace.
"Phishing" with fake emails, the United States used 41 kinds of cyber weapons to attack NPU
E-mail, a communication tool frequently used by teachers and students in colleges and universities, has been used by the United States without a bottom line.
In April of this year, Northwestern Polytechnical University reported to the police that the email system was attacked by phishing emails, and found a batch of phishing emails with the theme of scientific research review, defense invitation and going abroad notice, etc., containing Trojan programs, which lured some teachers and students to click on the link. , Illegal access to the e-mail login permissions of teachers and students, resulting in the risk of related e-mail data being stolen.
At the same time, some faculty and staff computers also have traces of cyber attacks.
Located in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, Northwestern Polytechnical University is affiliated to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It is a key university in the fields of aviation, aerospace, and marine engineering education and scientific research in my country. It has a large number of national top scientific research teams and high-end talents, and undertakes many national key scientific research projects. .
After receiving the alarm, the Xi'an public security organ attached great importance to it, and organized the police force and network security technical experts to set up a joint task force to investigate the case.
The National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and 360 Company jointly formed a technical team and participated in the technical analysis of the case throughout the process.
The technical team has successively extracted a variety of Trojan samples from multiple information systems and Internet terminals of Northwestern Polytechnical University, comprehensively used the existing domestic data resources and analysis methods, and obtained the full support of partners in some countries in Europe and South Asia to fully restore The general overview, technical characteristics, attack weapons, attack paths and attack sources of relevant attack events are presented.
The investigation showed that the NSA continued to conduct attacks on Northwestern Polytechnical University, stealing core technical data such as the school's key network equipment configuration, network management data, and operation and maintenance data.
The U.S. has successively used 41 types of specialized cyber-attack weapons and equipment, and there are 14 different versions of the backdoor tool "Cunning Heresy" alone.
The technical team divided the types of weapons used in this attack into four categories, including vulnerability attack and breakthrough weapons, persistent control weapons, sniffing and stealing weapons, and concealed and trace-removing weapons.
"In the beginning, we used vulnerability attack and breakthrough weapons, and after the breakthrough, we delivered the second type of persistent control weapons. Then we used the third type of sniffing and stealing weapons to steal our important data for a long time. When the task was considered to have been completed. , and began to use the fourth category of concealed and trace-removing weapons to clean up the scene so that the victim could not detect it." Du Zhenhua, a senior engineer at the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center, introduced.
Established in 1998, the Special Intrusion Operations Office of the National Security Agency is a tactical implementation unit of the U.S. government specializing in conducting large-scale cyber attacks on other countries and stealing secrets. It consists of more than 2,000 military and civilian personnel and has 10 divisions.
In order to conceal the cyberattack on Chinese information networks such as Northwestern Polytechnical University, the United States has made preparations for a long time and has made elaborate disguise.
The investigation shows that the specific intrusion operation office has used 54 springboards and proxy servers in the cyber attack operations against Northwestern Polytechnical University, which are mainly distributed in 17 countries including Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Poland, Ukraine, etc., of which 70% are located in China Neighboring countries, such as Japan, South Korea, etc.
Among them, the springboards used to cover up the real IPs are carefully selected, and all IPs belong to non-Five Eyes countries.
Through the correlation analysis of threat intelligence data, the technical team found that the network resources used by the attack platform of Northwestern Polytechnical University involved a total of 5 proxy servers. Mueller Diversified Systems purchased IP addresses in Egypt, the Netherlands and Colombia from the American company Terremark, and leased a batch of servers.
"The actions of the U.S. side have seriously endangered China's national security and the security of citizens' personal information. China strongly condemns it and demands an explanation from the U.S. side and an immediate stop to its illegal actions," said Mao Ning, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The United States implements large-scale, organized, and indiscriminate network theft, surveillance and attacks around the world. It is a veritable "Matrix" and "Secret Empire"
The experience of Northwestern Polytechnical University is only a microcosm of the US cyberattacks against China.
For a long time, in order to achieve the purpose of intelligence collection by the US government, the US National Security Agency has launched large-scale cyber attacks on the world, and my country is one of the key attack targets.
On February 23, Beijing Qi'an Pangu Lab disclosed that the hacker group "Equation" affiliated with the US National Security Agency used top-level backdoors to carry out "telescreen operations" against 45 countries and regions around the world, including China and Russia, for more than ten years. "Cyber attacks involve institutional targets including well-known universities, scientific research institutions, the communications industry, and government departments.
On March 2, a report released by the 360 company disclosed that the US National Security Agency used cyber weapons to carry out cyber attacks on 403 targets in 47 countries and regions around the world, including China, without stopping for decades.
The investigation report on the overseas cyber attack on Northwestern Polytechnical University also found that the NSA also used its controlled cyber attack weapon platform, "zero-day vulnerability" and network equipment to conduct indiscriminate voice calls on Chinese mobile phone users for a long time. Monitor, illegally steal the text messages of mobile phone users, and wirelessly locate them.
For a long time, the United States has abused its technological advantages to carry out large-scale, organized, and indiscriminate network theft, surveillance and attacks on a global scale. The methods include using analog mobile phone base station signals to access mobile phones to steal data, control mobile applications, and hack Cloud servers, stealing secrets through submarine optical cables, installing monitoring equipment in nearly 100 American embassies and consulates abroad to steal secrets from the host country, etc., are veritable "The Matrix" and "Secret Stealing Empire".
In 2013, Snowden, a former employee of a U.S. defense contractor, exposed the scandal of massive U.S. government cyber surveillance.
The NSA's global secret surveillance program, code-named "Prism," runs 24 hours a day, monitoring emails, Facebook messages, Google chats, Skype Internet calls, and more.
The United States implements indiscriminate surveillance and monitoring, from competitors to allies, all within the scope of its surveillance.
The "WikiLeaks" website broke the news in 2015 that since the 1990s, the German economic, financial and agricultural departments have entered the scope of surveillance in the United States.
From 2006 to 2012, the NSA monitored the French president, several ministers, French ambassador to the United States and other political leaders, including the three French presidents Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande, in order to obtain a policy platform , foreign policy and other information.
In 2020, the "Swiss Crypto Machine" incident surfaced.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has long controlled a Swiss global encryption machine company after World War II. The encryption equipment sold by the company to more than 100 countries around the world has been implanted with backdoor programs by the CIA to crack the codes that countries send encrypted messages. , to steal multinational secrets.
Last year, Danish media exposed that the U.S. National Security Agency used a partnership with Danish intelligence to spy on leaders and senior officials of European countries, including former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In addition to competitors and allies, the "Tianluodiwang" of monitoring and eavesdropping has not spared even the people in the United States.
Recently, Georgetown University's Center for Privacy and Technology Law released a report titled "America's Internet: Data-Driven Evictions in the 21st Century".
The report shows that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has crafted a sophisticated and sprawling surveillance network that can monitor most people living in the U.S. without permission.
The FBI conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of Americans' electronic data over the past year without warrants, according to an annual report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in April.
"Today Americans are increasingly applying surveillance to the rest of the world," warned Coffer, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in the United States. "Now we're dealing with a surveillance-industrial complex."
The United States is keen to implement "cyber bullying", which is one of the manifestations of its unscrupulous maintenance of its hegemonic system
Cyber attacks, digital surveillance, eavesdropping and surveillance... The U.S. has shown with actions time and time again that the U.S. is the real threat to global cyber security.
“So far, the world has not formed an effective constraint on the digital hegemony of the United States. In the future, when discussing responsible state behavior in the digital space, the international community should analyze the United States as a typical case, and then target its digital hegemony. Hegemony controls it," said Li Yan, executive director of the Institute of Technology and Cyber Security at the China Academy of Contemporary International Relations.
On the one hand, the United States recklessly monitors the world and launches cyberattacks; on the other hand, the United States calls out to catch thieves, slaps thieves, accuses other countries of launching cyberattacks, and tries its best to pretend to be a victim of cyberattacks and even maintainers of cybersecurity.
In recent years, the United States, together with the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Australia, has repeatedly accused China of fostering hackers and intelligence companies to launch large-scale cyberattacks and "splashing dirty water" on China on cybersecurity issues. However, no evidence has been presented so far.
American politicians also instigated and coerced other countries to join its so-called "clean network" program, in an attempt to eliminate Chinese companies from the online market. This discriminatory, exclusive and politicized "dirty network" is naturally unpopular and has received very few responses.
The United States, which has a huge advantage in the cyber field, is so keen to use its technological advantages to implement "cyber bullying" because of political interests, and it is one of the manifestations of safeguarding the hegemonic system by unscrupulous means.
Adhering to the tenet of "America first, everything first", the United States seeks "one-way transparency" in the information field of other countries, disregards the national security of other countries, and launches attacks recklessly.
The website of the Spanish newspaper El Pais once pointedly pointed out that the reason for the establishment of the "Matrix" by the United States is to seek to control global information in order to reverse the inevitable decline.
By monitoring the entire world and accurately tracking people's ideological trends, it has become the most important resource for the United States in global competition.
In order to achieve this goal, the United States, the largest "Matrix", has done everything possible.
And relying on the strong economic and scientific research strength of the United States, its reckless actions that have been exposed may only be the "tip of the iceberg".
"At present, China, Russia, the European Union, and ASEAN have all strengthened the protection of their own cyber sovereignty against this hegemonic act of the United States, and jointly resisted the cyber hegemonic act of the United States." Shanghai Institute of International Studies Cyberspace International Governance Lu Chuanying, secretary-general of the research center and researcher, said that the Chinese government has issued the "Global Data Security Initiative" to the world.
"We have seen that China and the League of Arab States, China and the five Central Asian countries have successively carried out further cooperation based on the "Global Data Security Initiative", which has provided a very good foundation for the development and peace of global cyberspace It is also a powerful weapon against US cyber hegemony.”
Threats to cyberspace security are a common challenge faced by all countries, and maintaining cybersecurity is the shared responsibility of the international community.
There is no doubt that the various hegemonic acts of the United States in the cyber field have placed itself on the opposite side of global data security and technological development.
At present, a century of changes is superimposed on a century-old epidemic, and the international security situation is turbulent.
Against this background, China advocates a new concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security. On the premise of respecting the sovereignty and security of other countries, China insists on peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation, and seeks win-win, multi-win and common Winning is the fundamental way to maintain global peace and security.
The United States should recognize that hegemonism and power politics will only endanger world peace, and group confrontation will only exacerbate security challenges.
Only participating in global cyberspace governance with a responsible attitude and playing a constructive role in maintaining cybersecurity is the right way.