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Hackers for sale: what we’ve learned from China’s enormous cyber leak | Technology


A enormous data leak from a Chinese cybersecurity firm has offered a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Beijing-linked hackers.

Analysts say the leak is a treasure trove of intel into the day-to-day operations of China’s hacking programme, which the FBI says is the biggest of any country. The company, I-Soon, has yet to confirm the leak is genuine and has not responded to a request for comment. As of Friday, the leaked data was removed from the online software repository GitHub, where it had been posted.

From staff complaints about pay and office gossip to claims of hacking foreign governments, here are some of the key insights from the leaks:

Who got hacked?

Every day, workers at I-Soon were targeting big fish.

Government agencies of China’s neighbours, including Kyrgyzstan, Thailand, Cambodia, Mongolia and Vietnam, had websites or email servers compromised, the leak revealed. There are long lists of targets, from British government departments to Thai ministries. I-Soon staff also boasted in leaked chats that they secured access to telecom service providers in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Thailand and Malaysia, among others. They named the government of India – a geopolitical rival of Beijing’s – as a key target for “infiltration”. And they claimed to have secured back-end access to higher education institutions in Hong Kong and self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory. But they also admitted to having lost access to some of their data seized from government agencies in Myanmar and South Korea.

Other targets are domestic, from China’s north-western region of Xinjiang to Tibet and from illegal pornography to gambling rings.

Who was paying I-Soon?

Judging from the leaks, most of I-Soon’s customers were provincial or local police departments – as well as province-level state security agencies responsible for protecting the Communist party from perceived threats to its rule. The firm also offered clients help protecting their devices from hacking and securing their communications – with many of their contracts listed as “non-secret”.

There were references to official corruption: in one chat, salesmen discussed selling the company’s…

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Why This Brain-Hacking Technology Will Turn Us All Into Cyborgs


It felt like magic: As I moved my head and eyes across the computer screen, the cursor moved with me. My goal was to click on pictures of targets on the display. Once the cursor reached a target, I would blink causing it to click on the target—as if it were reading my mind.

Of course, that’s essentially what was happening. The headband I was wearing picked on my brain, eye, and facial signals. This data was fed through an AI-software that translated it into commands for the cursor. This allowed me to control what was on the screen, even though I didn’t have a mouse or a trackpad. I didn’t need them. My mind was doing all of the work.

“The brain, eye, and face are great generators of electricity,” Naeem Kemeilipoor, the founder of brain-computer interface (BCI) startup AAVAA, told The Daily Beast at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show. “Our sensors pick up the signals, and using AI we can interpret them.”

The headband is just one of AAVAA’s products that promises to bring non-invasive BCIs to the consumer market. Their other devices include AR glasses, headphones, and earbuds that all essentially accomplish the same function: reading your brain and facial signals to allow you to control your devices.

While BCI technology has largely remained in the research labs of universities and medical institutions, startups like AAVAA are looking for ways to put them in the hands—or, rather, on the heads—of everyday people. These products go beyond what we typically expect of our smart devices, seamlessly integrating our brain with technology around us. They also offer a lot of hope and promise for people with disabilities or limited mobility—allowing them to interact with and control their computers, smartphones, and even wheelchairs.

However, BCIs also blur the lines between the tech around us and our very minds. Though they can be helpful for people with disabilities, their widespread use and adoption raises questions and concerns about privacy, security, and even a user’s very personhood. Allowing a device to read our brain signals throws open the doors to these ethical considerations so, as they steadily become more popular, they could become more dangerous as well.

AAVAA's BCI devices on a table at CES 2024.

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