Amnesty International's Canadian branch has disclosed a security breach detected in early October and linked to a threat group likely sponsored by China.
The international human rights non-governmental organization (NGO) says it first detected the breach on October 5, when it spotted suspicious activity on its IT infrastructure.
After detecting the attack, the NGO hired the services of cybersecurity firm Secureworks to investigate the attack and secure its systems.
"The investigation's preliminary results indicate that a digital security breach was perpetrated using tools and techniques associated with specific advanced persistent threat groups (APTs)," Amnesty International Canada
said.
"Forensic experts with leading international cyber-security firm Secureworks later established that 'a threat group sponsored or tasked by the Chinese state' was likely behind the attack."
The attack was linked to a suspected Chinese threat group based on the attackers' tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and the information they targeted, all consistent with Chinese state hackers' known behavior and tools.
