Chinese Government Actors Hacked NFTC, Cybersecurity Firm Says

Chinese “nation-state threat actors” breached the National Foreign Trade Council’s (NFTC’s) website between Feb. 27 and March 1, using a link leading to a remote script that would launch when anyone visited certain pages on the website, Fidelis Cybersecurity said. Fidelis first observed the “inject” on the registration page for an NFTC board meeting in Washington scheduled for March 7, the firm said. The remote script was the “Scanbox framework,” a web reconnaissance tool exclusively known in the research community to have been used by bad actors working with or sponsored by the Chinese government, Fidelis said. It's “highly probable” that the hack targeted private sector players involved in lobbying on U.S. foreign trade policy, the company said. The NFTC didn’t comment.