This is your Digital Frontline: Daily China Cyber Intel podcast.

Listeners, Ting here—your high-voltage guide on the digital frontlines, where China’s cyber shenanigans are always juicier than your Friday night hotpot. Buckle in, because today’s cyber intelligence download is packed.

In the past 24 hours, analysts haven’t even had time for a bubble tea break—here’s what’s buzzing. Broadcom’s Symantec Threat Hunter Team just confirmed that Chinese-linked hackers, specifically the groups Glowworm and UNC5221, ramped up exploitation of the SharePoint ToolShell flaw, CVE-2025-53770. They’re not playing around: just two days after Microsoft patched this zero-day, Glowworm launched espionage intrusions against Middle Eastern telecoms, then pivoted to chase government networks in Africa, South America, and even poked a U.S. university. These attackers used legit security software binaries—think Trend Micro or BitDefender—to mask malware like Zingdoor and KrustyLoader. If you’re imagining a cyber matryoshka doll of malware, you’re not wrong.

The U.S. industrial sector is still the juiciest dumpling on the plate. Trellix’s October report says industrial targets accounted for a spine-tingling 36% of attacks, with China-affiliated groups behind a major spike last spring as tensions flared around the Taiwan Strait and the Shandong aircraft carrier popped up in the ADIZ. These groups aren’t flashy—they blend into your org chart and stroll right past perimeter defenses disguised as regular users. And don’t forget the AI side: attackers are now rolling out AI-powered agentic tools to automate reconnaissance and run spear-phishing at scale, reported this morning by Tenable.

Let’s not overlook the Smishing Triad, those SMS scammers headquartered comfortably on Hong Kong infrastructure, running over 194,000 domains this year. They’re blasting U.S. brokerage clients with fake freight and banking alerts—Palo Alto Networks says a jaw-dropping billion dollars have been siphoned off globally since 2022 thanks to these SMS lures.

So, what should U.S. orgs do besides panic-buy cyber insurance? First, patch on-prem apps like SharePoint within hours of disclosures—seriously, timing is everything, as the ToolShell saga proves. Prohibit sideloading of binaries unless you control the supply chain. Invest in deep behavioral monitoring—if your endpoint security only looks for signature malware, you’ll miss advanced persistence like KrustyLoader. Revisit privileged access; China’s state-backed operators prefer living-off-the-land, slipping quietly into admin-style accounts for long-term access. Rotate credentials and audit usage on SQL, ColdFusion, and cloud management consoles weekly.

National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, speaking at the Meridian Summit, put it bluntly: Beijing’s campaign to seat itself at the core of U.S. infrastructure threatens "strategic chaos." That means the biggest defense is not just better firewall rules—it's building strategic awareness and resilience across every partner and supplier. No endpoint left behind.

That’s a wrap for today’s Digital Frontline. Thanks for tuning in—if you want your next cyber briefing free of corporate jargon and full of Ting’s trade secrets, subscribe. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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