U.S. Sanctions Chinese Entities for Major Firewall Cyberattacks
The U.S. has charged Chinese national Guan Tianfeng for exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Sophos firewalls, affecting 81,000 devices globally, including critical U.S. infrastructure. Guan, linked to Sichuan Silence Information Technology, allegedly used the CVE-2020-12271 flaw to execute remote code and steal data. The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned Guan and Sichuan Silence, a contractor for Chinese intelligence, while the State Department offers rewards for information on cyber threats to U.S. infrastructure.