A Chinese hacking group, believed to be affiliated with the Chinese Government, has penetrated Australian media organisations ahead of this weekend’s G20 meeting.
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of CrowdStrike, told the ABC’s 7.30 program that the group “Deep Panda” is the same group who were outed as spying on the networks of US foreign policy think tanks.
Now, Deep Panda is targeting Australian media organisations in an attempt to understand the domestic media climate when Chinese president Xi Jinping arrives. Alperovitch also identified another Chinese-government-linked hacking group, which he said was responsible for attacks against commercial and government networks in Australia, who he called Vixen Panda.
These he said were the group with the most focus on Australia of all the groups that it tracks from China. Alperovitch said he believed Vixen Panda was actually a Beijing-based military unit within the People’s Liberation Army’s Third Department.
