Dragon's Code: China's Fake Certificate Shop Is Hacking America's Power Grid and Water Supply

About this episode

The episode discusses sophisticated Chinese cyber operations targeting US critical infrastructure using malware signed by a fake certificate authority.

This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. I’m Alexandra Reeves, and this is Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege. Over the last few days, US networks have been wrestling with one of the most sophisticated waves of Chinese cyber operations we’ve seen outside an open crisis. According to Microsoft’s security blog, the newly exposed “Fox Tempest” malware‑signing service has become a kind of underground certificate authority for espionage crews linked to the Chinese state, quietly minting trusted‑looking digital signatures so malicious code slides past corporate defenses. Here’s how the playbook worked. First, threat actors used living‑off‑the‑land tactics: phishing against IT admins at US energy co‑ops and regional water authorities, then abusing built‑in tools like PowerShell and Windows Management Instrumentation so activity blended into normal admin traffic. Once in, they pulled down payloads that had been signed by Fox Tempest, giving their malware the same cryptographic “halo” as legitimate software. Security appliances saw a trusted signature and let it through. According to Microsoft’s incident responders, several US critical infrastructure operators…

People in this episode

Host: Alexandra Reeves

Topics covered

• cybersecurity
• Chinese cyber operations
• malware
• critical infrastructure
• digital signatures

Keywords

• cyber operations
• malware
• Fox Tempest
• US power grid
• water supply
• digital signatures
• phishing

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Microsoft, Fox Tempest

Places: US, East and Gulf Coast, Western

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