A hacker has reportedly stolen a massive amount of highly sensitive data, including defense documents and missile schematics, according to a CNN report on Wednesday.
Experts believe the data was siphoned from the National Supercomputing Center (NSCC) in Tianjin, per the CNN report, and that the hackers are offering access to the dataset for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The group allegedly responsible for the theft, which calls itself FlamingChina, posted a sample of the data on Telegram in early February, claiming it contained “research across various fields including aerospace engineering, military research, bioinformatics, fusion simulation and more," according to CNN.
Marc Hofer, a cybersecurity researcher and author of the blog NetAskari, told CNN that the dataset's size would make it attractive to adversarial state intelligence services.
“I’m sure that there are plenty of governments globally that are interested in some of the data at the NSCC, but many of those governments that are interested also may already have the data,” Dakota Cary, a consultant at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, told CNN.
Chinese Shahed-like drones offered online despite Alibaba ban
As Iran bombards Middle Eastern countries with swarms of suicide drones, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), similar to those used in war, can be found for sale online, sometimes marked as “model planes.”
Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba features multiple listings for drones, which are categorized for commercial use, yet carry an uncanny resemblance to the Iranian Shahed-136 suicide drone. Shahed-136 drones carry a warhead of up to 90 kilograms and fly in swarms before crashing into their targets.
Alibaba’s terms of service ban the sale of military equipment on the site. Yet, in recent days, it has come under scrutiny for carrying listings like these, leading the company to take down certain listings blatantly advertising “cruise missiles” and “suicide attack drones.”
Still, listings using other keywords or names have avoided being taken down, and Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post identified four listings for the Shahed-136 copy, with prices ranging from around $6,000 to over $40,000.
Leo Feierberg Better contributed to this report.