What I'm Reading 9/118/2020 - China, you lovable scamps

 SC magazine - FBI opens China-related counterintelligence case every 10 hours -

FBI Director Christopher Wray today offered the House Homeland Security Committee some sobering news about China – the FBI opens a new China-related counterintelligence case roughly every 10 hours.

Wray said of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases underway across the U.S., almost half are related to China. He said China aims to compromise American health care organizations, pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions conducing important COVID-19 research.

“They are going after cost and pricing information, internal strategy documents, personally identifiable information – anything that can give them a competitive advantage,” Wray told House members this morning.

Krebs on Security - Chinese Antivirus Firm Was Part of APT41 ‘Supply Chain’ Attack -

The U.S. Justice Department this week indicted seven Chinese nationals for a decade-long hacking spree that targeted more than 100 high-tech and online gaming companies. The government alleges the men used malware-laced phishing emails and “supply chain” attacks to steal data from companies and their customers. One of the alleged hackers was first profiled here in 2012 as the owner of a Chinese antivirus firm.

The Register - Video encoders using Huawei chips have backdoors and bad bugs – and Chinese giant says it's not to blame - 

Huawei insists the vulnerabilities were not introduced by its HiSilicon chips nor the SDK code it provides to manufacturers that use its components. That would mean someone else provided the makers of these video encoder devices application software riddled with holes, and this code was shipped with the equipment. The products just all happen to use the the hi3520d chipset.

In a statement emailed to The Register and posted online, a Huawei spokesperson said, "Following the media reports about the suspected security issues (CVE-2020-24214, CVE-2020-24215, CVE-2020-24216, CVE-2020-24217, CVE-2020-24218, and CVE-2020-24219) in HiSilicon video surveillance chips on September 16, 2020, Huawei has launched an immediate investigation. After technical analysis, it was confirmed that none of the vulnerabilities were introduced by HiSilicon chips and SDK packages. Huawei is in favor of coordinated vulnerability disclosure by all organizations and individuals in the security research ecosystem to reduce the impact on stakeholders."

 The Register - Feeling bad about your last security audit? Check out what just happened to the US Department of Interior -

"These attacks — which went undetected by security guards and IT security staff as we explored department facilities — were highly successful," the penetration-test report noted. "In fact, we intercepted and decrypted wireless network traffic in multiple bureaus."

It went on: "Even worse, with regard to two bureaus, our penetration test went far beyond the wireless network at issue and gained access to their internal networks. In addition, we successfully obtained the credentials of a bureau IT employee and were able to use that person’s credentials to log into the bureau’s help desk ticketing system and view the list of tickets assigned to the employee."