A Chinese military unit has run a hacking campaign that includes sending bogus email in a bid to intercept Western satellite communications and aerospace secrets, a US security firm said.
The report by the California-based firm Crowdstrike points to broader hacking by China weeks after the United States for the first time filed charges against Chinese military officers over alleged cyber-espionage.
Dubbed "Putter Panda" for its focus on the golf-playing set, the Shanghai-based unit is a "determined adversary group" that has operated since at least 2007 by sending email attacks that target Microsoft Outlook, Adobe Reader and other common software, Crowdstrike said.
Putter Panda's strategy includes sending email from innocuous-looking addresses -- mike.Johnson_mj@yahoo.Com was one example -- and offering fake invitations in hopes that users will click and unwittingly give hackers access to their computer systems.
One attachment sent to workers at the Toulouse Space Center in France was a false brochure for a local yoga studio, promoting "a universal method to better know yourself, the universe and the gods, as recommended by Socrates."
Crowdstrike, in the report released yesterday, said that Putter Panda appears bent on "obtaining intellectual property and industrial secrets related to defence technology" with an intent to "conduct space surveillance, remote sensing and interception of satellite communications."
Putter Panda "is likely to continue to aggressively target Western entities that hold valuable information or intellectual property relevant to these interests," it said.
