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South China Morning Post
5 days ago
- South China Morning Post
China's state security agency warns of phishing emails sent by foreign spies
China's top spy agency said foreign agents had sent Chinese military research institutes fake job applications in emails with a Trojan program embedded in them. In a social media post on Tuesday, the Ministry of State Security said they were among thousands of phishing emails sent by foreign spy agencies in recent years targeting Communist Party and government organs, national defence and military industrial units, as well as universities and research institutes. The post did not give details of who had been targeted in the recent attack, but said in one case an expert in shipbuilding technology at a well-known Chinese university had received an email from someone claiming to be a postgraduate student, identified as Wang. The academic, surnamed Yang, described it as a 'vague' application to be his research assistant. He asked the student to send a resume, and soon after received a reply with an encrypted Word document titled 'Resume' that required a password to open, which was provided in the email. Yang downloaded and opened the resume but became suspicious when he realised Wang was not a current university student and that his major was not related to Yang's research field. He asked further questions and the person said they were specifically interested in 'vessels and maritime equipment'. Yang then reported the email to the university's security department and notified state security authorities. According to Tuesday's post, the email was found to be a 'double trap' from a foreign intelligence agency – it aimed to use the researcher as a source of information but also included a Trojan program developed by the agency.
The Guardian
06-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Cheng Lei: ‘I'm catching up on four years. I missed my children so much'
'That is a crotch shot!' says Cheng Lei, laughing at my phone's screensaver. I tell her it's a picture of my legs but she's sceptical and laughs even more. You could be forgiven for expecting Cheng, 49, to be serious and sombre: the journalist spent two years and three months in prison in China for an absurd crime. Detained as a spy and kept in isolation for months, she was constantly watched by guards, and did not hear the voices of her two children for years. But she displays a quick wit, a devilish sense of humour and a relaxed laugh. She switches between analysing the rise of the Ministry of State Security under President Xi Jinping, to laughing about how the ladies in her cell would share a book about male yoga. Let's just say it was not for the poses. It's the second day of winter, and the morning sun is warming Melbourne's Botanical Gardens. We're strolling past rows of camellias and rhododendrons. Cheng says she picked this spot because of the colour. 'Look at where we are' she says as tears well in her eyes. It's been 19 months since she was released from prison and returned to Australia, thanks to intensive and high level diplomatic efforts by Australia during a period of worsening relations with China. She is still adjusting. 'I compare it to being a newborn, so every sensation is very intense,' she says. 'It's almost too much, but in a good way.' Cheng's book about her time in prison, Cheng Lei: A Memoir of Freedom, is frank and – like her – funny, describing everything from the excruciating boredom and psychological torture she experienced in prison, to her secret orgasms (turns out, prison does not kill your libido). No topic is left off the table. Between jokes about menstruation and constipation, Cheng offers her readers a rare glimpse of the secret world of China's state control. 'It gives you an insight into how they think about espionage, about state security,' she says. 'It's about how insecure they are.' In prison Cheng and other inmates slept on a piece of wood, the toilet walls were made of glass, and there was no caps for toothpaste tubes. Everything was grey. She recalls making a birthday sign for another prisoner, but even this was frowned upon by the guards. Prisoners were only meant to use pencils once a month to write letters home. 'We were underground, effectively in a coffin. And so tightly guarded,' she says. A lot of the time, she was trying to escape boredom. She would ask the guards and her family and friends for new books – books that she could savour, that were long. So desperate was she for reading material she devoured a 700-page book on interest rates and even gave Einstein's Theory of Relativity a crack. 'I read enough to realise I didn't understand it,' she says. Now, as she walks slowly through the gardens, she wipes away tears as she lists what she missed. Nature is something she keeps returning to. How much she still loves hearing Australian bird songs, and how, when she returned to Australia, going to the beach was one of the first things she wanted to do with her children, now 16 and 13. In prison, there were times she forced herself not to think about her children because it became too much to bear. When she was given her prison sentence, she immediately calculated how old her children would be when she was released. She missed her daughter's first day of high school, and cheering on her son at soccer. Missing them was more suffocating than her small cell. 'I didn't know if I'd ever see them again,' she says. 'They had to go … all that time not sure when I'd be back.' So when Cheng stepped off the plane she immediately went back into 'mum mode', she says. 'I'm catching up on four years,' she says. 'I just missed them so much.' Cheng was born in China, but at the age of 10 her family migrated to Australia. She wanted to study journalism, but her father persuaded her to do commerce – there was no way Australian media companies would hire a Chinese reporter he said, half-joking that the popular and long-serving SBS TV presenter Lee Lin Chin wasn't retiring any time soon. But unfulfilled, she ended up doing an internship at the Chinese state media company CCTV, before heading to Singapore and then back to the rebranded state network CGTN in 2012. Her life in Beijing was big and fast, she was a glamorous TV presenter, her show watched by millions. She interviewed everyone from the Australian ambassador to China, Geoff Raby, to David Beckham. She visited embassies and rubbed shoulders with China's elite. On 13 August 2020 she went to work thinking she was going to meet her boss about a new show proposal but instead walked into a meeting room filled with 20 people. 'I am informing you on behalf of the Beijing State Security Bureau that you are being investigated for supplying state secrets to foreign organisations,' one of them said. They took her to her apartment, where they went through her rooms, confiscating all her electronic devices. Cheng says she was 'naive' – she knew she had done nothing wrong, and thought she would be released in two or three days. After almost a year in prison, Cheng was charged with espionage, but her crime was innocuous: sending a private text message, eight words long, seven minutes too soon. She had allegedly broken a media embargo on a speech by the Chinese Premier by texting Bloomberg journalist, and then friend, Haze Fan, that there would be 'No growth target. GDP. 9 Min jobs target'. Breaking a media embargo in Australia would merit, at most, a verbal slap from the boss and being dropped from a media list. It would be a shitty day at work, and you might need a whinge and a wine on the way home. But it wouldn't be a life-changing crime. The original document Cheng had been given did not have an embargoed time on it. A year later, the prosecutor told security officials gathering evidence against her that they had to have proof it was embargoed for the case to go ahead. 'So they got the classification bureau to do up a document. Which they did, because they're all on the same side, and the state must win at all costs.' In China, national security trials are often conducted in secret, with sentences announced sometimes months after the trial. The conviction rate is more than 99%. Months after her arrest, she was charged, and told how long her sentence would be two weeks before her trial was due to finish. Her friend Haze was also imprisoned, and Cheng could hear her down the corridor. By then, agents had combed through their 60,000 texts and interrogated her for hours on end about their friendship. She began to wonder if their friendship had been a dangerous transaction. Had she been used? 'Honestly, I went through a lot of anger. But then also wished she was in my cell, because she was more fun to talk to. She did suffer, and I want to talk to her, because I want some form of closure, and I want to find out what happened to her.' Cheng says her arrest was more diplomatic pawn-playing than serious criminal conduct. 'If it wasn't [the embargo] they would have found something else,' she says. Now, after 19 months back at home, Cheng is a presenter on Sky News. In China, she is still hounded online by trolls, and state police have used a picture of her for an advertisement recruiting people to work for them breaking spies. Cheng is reflective. For her whole life she has straddled two cultures and two countries, and she is now defined by having been caught in the middle of frosty relations between the two. But in prison, with endless time, she taught herself how to change her thoughts. 'There was a time I was in solitude in a really hot cell. I switched my thinking from 'Oh my gosh, this is horrible! Even my hair feels like it's on fire', to I imagine I love the heat. 'I was like, OK, I'm going to make chips. We got these horrible steamed potatoes and I would flatten them between bits of plastic packaging and then lay them out in the sun and check them every hour. It didn't really work, they were still a bit chewy. 'But it was something new and something fun.' She now spends less time on Instagram and more time thinking about the people she loves. If someone honks at her, or she gets a traffic fine, she doesn't feel the stress she might once have. She shrugs and moves on. 'I love that I got to a space where I can see adversity for what it is. It's just a counterpoint,' she says. 'You never feel happy if you're happy all the time. Each annoyance is a chance to adapt.' Cheng Lei: A Memoir of Freedom is out now through HarperCollins
News.com.au
02-06-2025
- General
- News.com.au
Australian journalist Cheng Lei relives ‘torture' of China's secret jails in documentary
An Australian journalist has relived the 'mental torture' of her time in one of China's notorious RSDL black jail cells in a harrowing documentary detailing ordeal. It has been little more than one-and-a-half-years since Cheng Lei landed safely in Australia after spending nearly three in Chinese custody. She was a prominent business anchor for a Chinese state broadcaster when Ministry of State Security officers unexpectedly raided her Beijing apartment in August, 2020. After hunting through her belongings and seizing all her electronic devices, they blindfolded Cheng and disappeared her into China's web of secret prisons. Now a Sky News presenter based in her hometown of Melbourne, Cheng has delved into the brutality of her detention in a documentary for the network titled Cheng Lei: My Story. She shares heart-wrenching details of the darkest period of her life and offers a rare glimpse into one of the most ruthless justice systems on the planet. Cheng was held in solitary confinement for nearly six months after being accused of endangering China's national security. Chinese authorities never fully clarified the allegation, but that did not stop them holding her for 177 days before her official arrest. 'RSDL is the Chinese spelling for hell,' Cheng said in the documentary. 'It stands for Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location, which makes you think it's house arrest. 'But in reality, it's mental torture.' Little is known about RSDL in China. But Safeguard Defenders, which tracks disappearances in China, has scraped enough together to paint a deeply disturbing picture. Detainees are kept at unknown locations for up to six months in cells 'designed to prevent suicide', according to the human rights not-for-profit. Witnesses have told the group they were denied legal counsel or contact with the outside world and 'regularly subjected to torture and forced to confess' — experiences hauntingly similar to Cheng's. Faced with a recreation of her cell, Cheng became emotional and said the months she spent inside were 'as close to dying and wanting to die as I ever got'. 'Yeah, this is where I spent six months,' she said as she entered the mock cell. 'Just sitting like this, thinking I was never gonna get out and absolutely helpless.' The room was simple — blank, cream walls, a bed and a stool for the guards that watched over her 24/7. She was forbidden from talking or making the 'slightest movement', and had to receive permission before so much as scratching herself, she explained. 'So you're in a bare room, and you are guarded and watched at all times by two guards,' Cheng said. 'One stands in front of me, one sits next to me, and they take turns with the standing and sitting. 'I have to sit on the edge of the bed and have my hands on my lap. 'Not allowed to cross the ankles or cross the legs, not allowed to close the eyes, no talking, no laughing, no sunshine, no sky, no exercise, no requests, no colour — just fear, desperation, isolation and utter boredom.' She says she sat like that for 13 hours each day. 'I hated having to sit still, not being able to do anything,' Cheng said. 'How do they come up with this — just nothingness? Nothingness, but also a sea of pain. 'I had no idea what was happening, or how long I would be here.' Outside, fierce diplomatic efforts were underway to gain consular access to her, with Australian officials fighting to get information to her loved ones — including her two children in Melbourne — about where she was and what her condition was. Safeguard Defenders has estimated as many as 113,407 people have been placed into RSDL and later faced trial. After she was formally arrested, Cheng was taken out of RSDL and moved into a larger cell with three other women. She stayed there for the remainder of her detention. Cheng and her cellmates were still subjected to 24-hour surveillance, but at least she was not alone, and a clearer picture was forming of what had landed her in custody. 'Eight words' As a senior journalist working for state media, she had access to Chinese government releases before they were published, including a major announcement that Beijing was not setting a 2020 GDP target due to uncertainty from the Covid-19 pandemic. Cheng was close friends with a reporter at Bloomberg, Haze Fan. The journalists shared their sources with each other. Cheng said Fan had been pushing for a 'series of government reports from me that hadn't been published in order to break the story at Bloomberg'. 'And I wanted to help her, because she had helped me,' Cheng said. 'When I told her the eight words which were 'no growth target', 'GDP', nine million jobs target' at 7:23am, I thought that would help her break the story, which they did.' She sent the text just seven minutes before the announcement was published. 'The charge was supplying state secrets to foreign entities, which boils down to texting eight words, seven minutes before the embargo (lifted), to my friend at Bloomberg,' Cheng said. Cheng was detained during a low point in Australia's relationship with China. Former prime minister Scott Morrison had infuriated Beijing when he backed an inquiry into the origins of coronavirus. China's ambassador at the time warned Australia's push for a probe was 'dangerous'. Soon after, tariffs were slapped on Australian goods, leading to a years-long trade war that has only recently eased, with the Albanese government unlocking $20bn worth of trade. Cheng's incarceration has been broadly seen as being part of China's efforts to pressure Australia. She was only released as ties with China began to normalise in late 2023. Cheng made clear the suffering she endured as a pawn in a geopolitical game. 'You don't know if you'll ever see your family again, because you don't know what they (the Chinese government) want,' she said. 'You don't know how everything you've done that you thought was good was now possibly criminal. 'Everything that made you happy or gave you pleasure now just was so far, is so removed from you. It was a cause of pain.'
Al Arabiya
28-05-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Czech FM summons Chinese ambassador over cyberattack
China's ambassador to the Czech Republic was summoned on Wednesday over a cyberattack that targeted Prague's foreign ministry, Czech officials said. The Czech foreign ministry said an extensive investigation of the attack 'led to a high degree of certainty about the responsible actor,' naming it as China-linked group APT31. 'I summoned the Chinese ambassador to make clear that such hostile actions have serious consequences for our bilateral relations,' Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said on X. The foreign ministry of the Czech Republic, an EU and NATO member of 10.9 million people, said in a statement the attack started in 2022 and targeted 'one of the unclassified networks' of the ministry. 'The malicious activity... was perpetrated by the cyberespionage actor APT31 that is publicly associated with the (Chinese) Ministry of State Security,' the ministry added, citing its investigation. 'We call on the People's Republic of China to... refrain from such attacks and to take all appropriate measures to address this situation,' said the ministry. Lipavsky said that 'we detected the attackers during the intrusion.' The Czech Security Information Office (BIS) singled out China as a threat to security in its 2024 annual report. 'The Chinese embassy logically focuses on gaining information about the Czech political scene,' the BIS said. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas condemned the cyberattack in a statement. 'In 2021, we urged Chinese authorities to take action against malicious cyber activities undertaken from their territory,' Kallas said, adding EU members have nonetheless witnessed attacks from China since then. 'We call upon all states, including China, to refrain from such behaviour, to respect international law and to adhere to the UN norms and principles, including those related to critical infrastructure,' she added. 'Growing pattern' NATO also slammed the attack, saying it observed 'with increasing concern the growing pattern of malicious cyber activities stemming from the People's Republic of China.' Prague has recently angered Beijing by fostering close ties with Taiwan as high-profile Czech delegations, including the parliament speakers, have visited the island while Taiwanese officials came to Prague several times. China is trying to keep Taipei isolated on the world stage and prevents any sign of international legitimacy for the island. It sees such visits as an infringement of the one-China policy which Prague officially pursues, just like the rest of the EU. In May 2024, Lipavsky summoned the Russian ambassador over repeated cyberattacks targeting several European countries, including the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland. They blamed the attacks on the Russian group APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, which has ties to Russia's GRU military intelligence service. The BIS then said that Russia was a 'permanent security threat' for the Czech Republic, which provides substantial humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine, battling a Russian invasion since 2022. It added the Chinese threat was also growing in the context of the Ukraine war as 'the North Korea-China axis keeps cultivating relations with Russia which give it a boost in the current conflict.' Beijing flatly denies allegations that it engages in state-organized hacking of overseas targets.
South China Morning Post
26-05-2025
- South China Morning Post
China's former state employees warned not to leak classified information
China's top intelligence agency has warned all former state employees with access to sensitive information to be aware of the risks of leaking state secrets In a social media post on Monday, the Ministry of State Security said managing these workers after they retired or left their jobs was 'not a private affair but a vital component of national security'. It called for vigilance against such risks to ensure information security. 'Some individuals, after leaving their positions, disregard national security and interests, misinterpret the declassification period as a restriction of freedom or a career shackle, and even go into hiding or evade supervision,' the ministry said. It cited a case involving a person, identified only by his surname Feng, who was sentenced to six years in prison for leaking state secrets after retiring from his job at a state-owned enterprise. 05:29 China executes scientist for spying in 2016, among 10 'shocking' cases revealed in documentary China executes scientist for spying in 2016, among 10 'shocking' cases revealed in documentary The ministry said Feng had been lured by a foreign espionage agency that offered him a substantial 'consulting fee'. It said Feng had maintained close ties with his former colleagues at the company and was able to gain access to core classified information in a critical industry sector.
