Of 72 groups that FireEye suspects of operating in China or in China’s interests, 13 of them compromised corporate networks in the U.S., Europe and Japan between last fall - when the agreement was reached - and this month, according the report, “Redline Drawn: China Recalculates Its Use of Cyber Espionage”.
They also compromised a combination of government, military and business networks in countries surrounding China, the report says.
FireEye attributes the 72 China-related attack groups with carrying out 262 network compromises during that time period against a range of victim types, some of them corporations.
But overall, China-based cyber espionage against corporate targets has been declining since 2014, well before the agreement with the U.S.
Why
FireEye suggests several reasons:
FireEye says that declines in corporate cyber espionage might not all be directed by the state. In tracking the 72 threat actors in China, it notes that some have altered some of their tools and tactics, and some have altered none of them. Some have changed some of their tools and tactics apparently in response to having their old ones exposed publicly. Some groups have changed the goal of their activities from spying to compromising servers to use as infrastructure for later attacks.
The bottom line, FireEye says, is that there appears to be no centrally controlled and coordinated cyber espionage effort. Groups may act out of a desire for economic or military advantage or they may do so out of patriotism. The net result is fewer incidents of China-backed corporate espionage, the report says.