The mystery of China’s sudden warnings about US hackers

For the past decade, US officials and cybersecurity companies have been naming and shaming Chinese hackers they believe work for the Chinese government. According to security experts, these hackers have stolen terabytes of data from companies like pharmaceutical and video game firms. Individual Chinese hackers face indictments as China's alleged hacking has grown more brazen. Things may be changing.

China's Foreign Ministry and the country's cybersecurity firms have accused the US of espionage. These allegations have been very rare. The disclosures appear to rely on old technical details, which are already publicly known. The move may be a strategic change for China as it tries to cement its position as a tech superpower.

These are useful materials for China's propaganda campaigns when they faced US accusations of cyber espionage, says Che Chang, a cyber threat analyst.

China's accusations follow a very similar pattern. The Chinese security company Pangu Lab published allegations that the US National Security Agency's elite Equation Group hacked into 45 countries. The Global Times, a tabloid newspaper that is part of China's state-controlled media, ran an exclusive report on the research. On March 14, the newspaper had a second exclusive story about the NOPEN tool, based on information from China. A week later, a Chinese firm alleged that the US had been attacking Chinese companies. On April 19 the Global Times reported on more findings from the National Computer Viruses Emergency Response Center.

China is gravely concerned over the irresponsible cyber activities of the US government.

While cyber activity undertaken by state actors is often wrapped in highly classified files, many hacking tools developed by the US are no longer secret. Many of the CIA's tools were detailed in the Vault7 leaks, which were published in the year 2017. The Shadow Brokers hacking group stole data from one of the NSA's elite hacking teams and slowly dripped the data to the world. The Eternal Blue hacking tool, which has been used in some of the largest cyberattacks, was included in the Shadow Brokers leaks. Many of the details in the Shadow Brokers leaks are similar to those that were disclosed by Edward Snowden. The agency doesn't comment on its activities for this story, but it does say that it has no comment.