Chinese govt backed hackers exploit bug to compromise internet companies, cybersecurity firm claims

Lumen Technologies informed about the alleged hacking incident in a blog post and added that four US companies and one non-US firm have been identified.

Versa Network acknowledged the vulnerability of the data and accepted that Versa Director faced exploitation “in at least one known instance” by a group of hackers.

“A vulnerability was recently discovered in Versa Director. This vulnerability allowed potentially malicious files to be uploaded by users with Provider-Data-Center-Admin or Provider-Data-Center-System-Admin privileges,” Versa Networks said in a bulletin.

Lumen in its blog post added that according to its assessment, the hack was carried out by an advanced hacking group “Volt Typhoon” which is backed by the Chinese government.

Lumen also said that it was “moderately confident” about its assessment in identifying the hacker group.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency added Versa’s vulnerability case to its “known exploited vulnerabilities” list but both the Chinese Embassy in Washington and the US officials denied details about the incident, news agency Reuters reported.

The Chinese government has always denied its involvement in any kind of cyber espionage, though the US has been taking a strict stance against companies linked directly to Beijing who could be potential threats to national security. TikTok is treading a dangerous path in the US for example.