According to reports, hackers working for China’s Ministry of State Security breached the networks of Hewlett Packard and IBM and then used the access to hack into the computers of their clients.
These attacks are part of a Chinese campaign is known as “Cloudhopper,” which the United States and Britain said on Thursday has infected technology service providers as an attempt to steal confidential information from their clients.
While many cybersecurity firms and government agencies have issued multiple warnings about the Cloudhopper threat since 2017, they have not disclosed the identity of clients whose networks were compromised in the event of such attacks. The question that arises now is if the government is ordering these attacks or have the hackers gone rogue.
IBM said it had no evidence that sensitive corporate data had been compromised. Hewlett Packard said it could not comment on the Cloudhopper campaign.
“IBM has been aware of the reported attacks and already has taken extensive counter-measures worldwide as part of our continuous efforts to protect the company and our clients against constantly evolving threats,” the company said in a statement. “We take responsible stewardship of client data very seriously, and have no evidence that sensitive IBM or client data has been compromised by this threat.”
HPE said in a statement that it had spun out a large managed-services business in a 2017 merger with Computer Sciences Corp that formed a new company, DXC Technology.
“The security of HPE customer data is our top priority,” HPE said. “We are unable to comment on the specific details described in the indictment, but HPE’s managed services provider business moved to DXC Technology in connection with HPE’s divestiture of its Enterprise Services business in 2017.”
DXC Technology declined to comment, saying in a statement that it does not comment on reports about specific cyber events and hacking groups.
