“Hackers are increasingly using false flag operations that wrongly point the blame toward China for some cyberattacks, threat intelligence experts said. Because Chinese hackers often rely on publicly available tools for their operations, it is easy to mimic their signature viruses, Brandon Helms, the chief operations officers at Rendition Infosecurity, a cybersecurity company that does incident response and threat intelligence, told Fifth Domain. Helms said the issue is becoming more prevalent because most hackers have access to the same publicly available tools that China favors. The trend is emerging as tension increases between the U.S. and Chinese governments and the United States takes a more aggressive approach in pursuing Chinese hackers. Sometimes IT workers notice viruses that appear as if they are Chinese handiwork, but upon further investigation are from another group, Helms said. Helms warned that it is difficult for most U.S. private sector companies to attribute cyberattacks because they do not have enough resources and intelligence. One of the reasons why the U.S. government is often slow to publicly attribute cyberattacks is because officials need to be certain that a particular actor is responsible for an event, Helms said. But no matter who is responsible for cyberattacks, experts say the methods to protect networks are similar.”
Source: Hackers are making their attacks look like they came from the Chinese government
