International cyber agencies on Thursday (23 April) urged organisations to strengthen defences against covert networks used by China-linked hackers to conceal malicious activity, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said.
The NCSC published the new guidance alongside industry partners and 15 international agencies from eight countries: the U.S., Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain.
Covert networks - typically made up of vulnerable, everyday internet-connected devices such as home routers and smart devices - are used to target critical sectors globally, steal sensitive data and maintain persistent access.
"In recent years, we have seen a deliberate shift in cyber groups based in China utilising these networks to hide their malicious activity in an attempt to avoid accountability," NCSC Director of Operations Paul Chichester said in a statement.
The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The new guidance - jointly issued with agencies including the U.S.’s Federal Bureau of Investigation - warns that attacks can be difficult to detect because evidence can disappear quickly, complicating efforts to disrupt such activity.
The advisory comes a day after Richard Horne, head of the NCSC, warned Britain to brace for a rise in cyberattacks directly or indirectly linked to nation states, including China, Iran and Russia.
He said his agency continued to handle about four nationally significant cyber incidents a week on average, adding that the most severe attacks were increasingly tied to governments rather than criminal groups alone.
Britain has also called on leading AI companies to work with the government to develop AI-powered cyber-defence capabilities aimed at protecting critical national infrastructure.
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