From trade wars to cyber wars in modern era

In December 2024, the US Bureau of Industry and Security imposed a new set of export controls on Chinese companies, escalating tensions between the two countries to a new level. After Beijing retaliated with a ban on export of rare earth metals, the matter apparently receded – but only to be fought in cyber space. A couple of weeks ago, the US Treasury department reported a hacking incident where they accused a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor of accessing treasury department's computers remotely. Instead of directly hacking the department's infrastructure, the APT actor compromised a third-party service provider BeyondTrust for API keys to remotely access Treasury department's assets. Under the Federal Information Security Modernisation Act (FISMA) of 2014, all US state departments must file a comprehensive report about attack vectors, the impact on operations and the incident response actions taken, if an APT actor is found involved in hacking.