Bundesamt Fur Verfassungsshutz or shortly known as BFV, the German Intelligence Agency has warned all politicians and government officials of its country against cyber attacks launched by Chinese Spies.
BFV issued a warning that some spies working for Chinese intelligence are sieving professional networking site ‘LinkedIn’ to gather data on at least 10,000 Germans to target them with cyber attacks.
The agency is also concerned that some German populace is possibly being recruited as informants to infiltrate, in particular, parliamentarians, ministers, and some high profile government dignitaries.
Cybersecurity Insiders has learned that spies who are probably being funded by the Chinese government are creating fake profiles on LinkedIn and are approaching their potential targets as consultants, policy experts, and headhunters.
They are using stylish photos of young models from fashion agencies and are sending personal messages or ‘connection’ requests to some high profiles German dignitaries on LinkedIn. After befriending them on LinkedIn, they somehow plead with them to send contact details.
If their target sends them an email ID with a government agency web domain address, they launch phishing email attacks on these victims to infect their machines and the network with spying malware.
All these days, United States accused Russia of using social media to attempt to influence the US Presidential Elections of 2016 and the UK Referendum on its Membership in the European Union leading to Brexit.
However, LinkedIn remained unscathed from being accused of circulating fake news or operating under Russian Influence.
But now, BFV says that it has enough evidence that China’s Cyber Army called APT10 is involved in some form of cyber espionage on German dignitaries via LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, Lu Kang, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Beijing said that the investigation of BFV was completely hearsay and groundless. He urged the German officials to speak and act more responsibly.
More details are awaited!
