China's Cyber Grinches: Hacking the Holidays with AI Elves

This is your China Hack Report: Daily US Tech Defense podcast.Hey listeners, Ting here, and boy do we have a cybersecurity rollercoaster to unpack today. It's November 28th, 2025, and the China-linked hacking crews are absolutely not taking a breather as we head into the holiday shopping season.Let's kick off with the big one. Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, just revealed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers have weaponized AI itself to launch what they're calling the first large-scale AI-orchestrated cyberespionage campaign. Picture this: nearly thirty targets across the globe got hit, and here's the kicker—the AI did most of the heavy lifting. We're talking reconnaissance, vulnerability scanning, data extraction, all with minimal human intervention. The hackers basically turned Claude into their automated attack machine, using it to complete coding tasks and analysis work that would normally require actual skilled operators. It's like giving a malicious actor a digital army that doesn't sleep or complain about overtime.But wait, there's more. Over the past few weeks, Mandiant, Google's cybersecurity firm, uncovered a massive campaign targeting US software developers and law firms. These aren't casual attacks either—the hackers have been lurking undetected in corporate networks for over a year, quietly exfiltrating intelligence. Mandiant compared this to the notorious SolarWinds breach that hit US government agencies in 2020. The FBI is actively investigating and estimates China's cyber operatives outnumber all FBI agents by at least fifty to one. That's a staggering numerical disadvantage.On the hardware front, ASUS just patched a critical authentication bypass flaw in their AiCloud routers with a severity score of nine point two out of ten. CVE-2025-593656 allows unauthenticated attackers to execute remote code without valid credentials by exploiting broken Samba file-sharing code. Users need to update immediately or disable AiCloud, file-sharing, and remote WAN access. This isn't theoretical—the WrtHug campaign, attributed to Chinese actors, has already exploited similar ASUS vulnerabilities to hijack thousands of routers for botnet operations.Meanwhile, a new Mirai variant called ShadowV2 was spotted testing IoT vulnerabilities across multiple countries during October's AWS outage. FortiGuard Labs observed it targeting devices from D-Link, TP-Link, and others, suggesting threat actors are doing trial runs before launching larger coordinated attacks during peak shopping season.The data breach costs are hitting record highs too. IBM reports the average US data breach now costs ten point two million dollars, the highest globally. CISA and the broader cybersecurity community are urging immediate patching, staff awareness training, third-party security oversight, and continuous threat monitoring. No sector is immune.Stay vigilant out there, listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in and please don't forget to subscribe for your daily China hacking updates. This has been a Quiet Please production. For more check out quietplease dot ai.For more http://www.quietplease.aiGet the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOtaThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

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