This is your Digital Dragon Watch: Weekly China Cyber Alert podcast.
If you thought last week was wild, buckle up, because the digital battlefield just got a whole lot hotter. I’m Ting, and this is your Digital Dragon Watch: Weekly China Cyber Alert.
This past week, the spotlight’s been on Operation WrtHug, a China-linked campaign that’s hijacked over 50,000 ASUS WRT routers worldwide. SecurityScorecard’s STRIKE team found attackers exploiting six legacy vulnerabilities—CVE-2023-41345, CVE-2023-41346, CVE-2023-41347, CVE-2023-41348, CVE-2024-12912, and CVE-2025-2492—to build a stealthy espionage network. Most of the victims are in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, and the campaign’s signature is a suspicious self-signed TLS certificate with a 100-year expiration. This isn’t just a botnet; it’s an ORB, or Operational Relay Box, designed for covert data theft. The same tactics were seen in the earlier AyySSHush campaign, and experts are debating whether it’s one evolving operation or two coordinated groups.
Meanwhile, the US government’s response is in full swing. The House just passed the PILLAR Act and the Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act. These bills reauthorize the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program, giving states and localities more tools to defend against threats like Volt Typhoon. The new interagency task force, led by CISA and the FBI, will deliver annual classified reports to Congress on Chinese cyber activity. Rep. Andy Ogles called it a way to “lock out the foreign communists trying to steal American data,” and Rep. John Moolenaar said it’ll help counter threats like Volt Typhoon.
On the defensive side, the Cyberspace Administration of China rolled out new Cybersecurity Incident Reporting Measures in September, mandating swift reporting of incidents. The US is also pushing for better coordination and more resources, especially for small communities that often lack the staff and budget to defend themselves.
Experts recommend patching those legacy vulnerabilities, upgrading to supported devices, and staying vigilant against outdated services. The threat landscape is evolving fast, and both sides are ramping up their game.
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