Alleged US cyberattacks against Chinese university detailed

The U.S. National Security Agency's Tailored Access Operations has been accused by China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center to deploy 41 different cyber weapons in cyberattacks against the Northwestern Polytechnical University in the city of Xi'an, ZDNET reports. In a new report, the CVERC claimed that TAO leveraged the "Suctionchar" program to facilitate account and credential theft from remote management and file transfer services. "Suctionchar can run stealthily on target servers, monitor in real-time users' input on the terminal program of the operating system console, and intercept all kinds of user names and passwords," said the report, which was co-authored by Chinese cybersecurity provider Beijing Qi'an Pangu Laboratory Technology. Other components of Bvp47, a Trojan program claimed by Pangu Lab to be developed by the Equation Group, have also been used alongside Suctionchar, and has already been leveraged in attacks aimed at 45 countries for more than 10 years.