Belgium is investigating a supposed breach of state security data (VSSE) by the Chinese government hackers.
In a statement sent to TechCrunch on Friday, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office said a cyberattack investigation opened in November 2023 after learning about the alleged violation.
This confirms a previous report by the French Belgian newspaper Le soirwhich reported that a Chinese hacking team gained access to the external mail service server of the Intelligence Service between 2021 and 2023.
The Piracy Chinese Piracy team took advantage of a vulnerability to the US security company Barracuda. The critical score, which Barracuda first unveiled in May 2023, affects the Security Gateway (ESG), a wall of protection for filtering incoming and outbound emails for potentially malicious content.
Barracuda spokesman Lesley Sullivan told TechCrunch that “questions about VSSE violations are more appropriate to VSSE”. VSSE did not answer TechCrunch questions.
Security researchers at the US company Cybersecurity Mandiant previously said The vulnerability, which could allow hackers to neutralize sensitive corporate data, had exploited as a zero day by a team supported by China to target organizations around the world. Nearly one -third of target organizations were government agencies, according to Mandiant.
Although released a patch for vulnerability, Barracuda in June 2023 urged all customers who are hurting to replace ESG devices affected by vulnerability. He also informed customers to rotate any credentials connected to the devices and to check for signs of compromise dating from at least October 2022.
According to Le Soir, Hackers who support China took advantage of the Barracuda defect to eliminate 10% of the Belgian Intelligence Service. He notes that while the classified information was not affected, the personal data of almost half of VSSE employees had access, including identity documents, biographies and internal communications.
VSSE reportedly interrupted the use of Barracuda products after Cyberettack, which was first mentioned by local media July 2023.
Zack Whittaker contributed to the report.
