US alleged of compromising Chinese earthquake monitoring equipment

The U.S. has been accused by Chinese state-controlled newspaper Global Times of infiltrating Wuhan-based earthquake monitoring equipment with a trojan program that could allegedly prompt seismic intensity data theft and manipulation, which it claims to be a serious national security threat, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. The Global Times claimed that the U.S. has leveraged the National Security Agency's "Validator" tool to facilitate the compromise, with the tool also leveraged in hacking critical infrastructure organizations in China and other countries. The CIA has also been accused of having cyber weapons that could impact nearly all internet and Internet of Things assets worldwide. Despite the claims, the newspaper has not provided any indicators of compromise or technical intelligence for attack attribution. Such allegations come after Chinese hacking group Storm-0558 was able to hack U.S. and Western European government email accounts through the exploitation of a vulnerability in Microsoft's cloud email service.