Prior to the Chinese police hanging high-powered surveillance cameras and locking up ethnic minorities by the hundreds of thousands in China’s western region of Xinjiang, China’s hackers went to work building malware.
The Chinese hacking campaign, which researchers at Lookout — the San Francisco mobile security firm — had started as early as 2013 and continues to this day, was part of a broad and incredibly illusive effort to pull in data from the devices that know their people best: their phones.
Lookout found links between eight types of malicious software (some previously known, others not) that explain how groups connected to China’s government surveilled Android phones used by Xinjiang’s largely Muslim Uighur population on a scale far larger than had been realized before.
The timeline suggests the hacking campaign was an early cornerstone in China’s Uighur surveillance efforts that would later extend to collecting blood samples, voice prints, facial scans and other personal data to transform Xinjiang into a virtual police state. Much of the biometric data collection was done with the helping hand of United States companies sharing intellectual property with the CCP.
The tools the hackers created hid in keyboards (Key-logger) used by Uighurs and disguised themselves as commonly used applications in third-party websites. Some could remotely turn on a phone’s microphone, record calls or export photos, phone locations and conversations on chat apps. Others were embedded in apps that hosted Uighur-language news, Uighur-targeted beauty tips, religious texts like the Quran and details of the latest Muslim cleric arrests.
The Lookout Threat Intelligence team has discovered four Android surveillanceware tools, which we named SilkBean, DoubleAgent, CarbonSteal, and GoldenEagle. These four interconnected malware tools are elements of much larger mAPT (mobile advanced persistent threat) campaigns originating in China, and primarily targeting the Uyghur ethnic minority. Activity of these surveillance campaigns has been observed as far back as 2013.
Apurva Kumar, Lookout Staff Security Intelligence Engineer
A about 10 years ago, the People’s Liberation Army’s hackers were notable not so much for the complexity of their attacks but presented challenges due to the sheer the volume of their attacks. But under threat of American sanctions, President Xi Jinping of China struck an agreement with President Barack Obama in 2015 to cease hacking American targets for commercial gain. The agreement stuck for a time, with a significant decline in Chinese hacks on the United States.
Following the noted decline in cyber attacks on U.S. private entities, researchers determined that simultaneously China had turned its most advanced hacking tools on its own people. In overlapping discoveries, researchers at Google, Volexity, (a private security firm) and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Public Affairs separately uncovered what looked to be an advanced Chinese hack against iPhones and Android phones belonging to Chinese Uighurs and Tibetans throughout the world.
In 2015, the in Beijing authorities grew “desperate” to track fast-growing Uighur communications online, Mr. Byler said. Uighurs began to fear that their online chats discussing Islam or politics were risky. Savvier Uighurs took to owning a second “clean phone,” said Mr. Byler, who lived in Xinjiang in 2015.
Following the attempted deterrence of surveillance by the oppressed Uighurs, the police began confiscating their phones. In some cases, they returned them months later with new spyware installed. Other times, people were handed back entirely different phones. Officials visiting Uighur villages regularly recorded the serial numbers used to identify smartphones. They lined the streets with new hardware that tracked people’s phones as they walked past.
The compromised apps mimicked VPNs, which are used to set up secure web connections and view prohibited content inside China. They also targeted apps frequently used by Uighurs for shopping, video games, music streaming, adult media and travel booking, as well as specialized Uighur keyboard apps. Some offered Uighurs beauty and traditional-medicine tips. Others impersonated apps from Twitter, Facebook, QQ — the Chinese instant messaging service — and the search giant Baidu.
It’s imperative that we take note of China’s use of DNA sequencing data to produce biometric facial recognition software. This armed the Chinese communist party with the ability to find any face, as long as they’ve attained DNA samples from the subject before hand. But as we know, the CCP has already done that among other jurassic measures. So the question remains, why has the American public not been made aware of the lengths that the CCP has gone to persecute these people?
The answer to that is simple, it’s because many Americans will see the most raw results of malicious intent behind a computer. This single topic of conversation alone is enough to make someone who takes interest in technology wonder what is next for America. Considering the divide we’ve seen in society due to COVID-19 propaganda. The person next to you on a bus could be experiencing life in America completely bought into Fauci’s lies. But your choice to refuse vaccination could become troublesome for the sleeping sheep. Only because the lying “omniscient” medical practitioners suggest as such. Stay inquisitive in the word of God, and the world around you.
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