Romanian lawmakers targeted by Chinese government-backed hackers

Three Romanian members of Parliament have been targeted by a group of hackers supported by the Chinese government, according to Europa Libera Romania. The group actively gathered data on government officials and politicians in several countries.

Authorities in the US, the UK, and New Zealand recently revealed that hackers supported by China tried to obtain data on people or officials. Among the politicians targeted by this global cyber espionage campaign are also three from Romania, according to an indictment by the US Department of Justice.

The three Romanian deputies, namely Cătălin Teniță (REPER), Alexandru Muraru (PNL), and former deputy Pavel Popescu (PNL), have been critical of the Chinese government.

The three were victims of a spying campaign orchestrated by a group of hackers named APT31 against the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC, an international group consisting of several parliamentarians focused on how democratic countries should relate to China. The lawmakers in the group have been critical of the communist regime in China and accused it of violating human rights.

IPAC was founded in 2020, on the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests brutally suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party. Around or in January 2021, the hackers registered ten email accounts, from which they sent over 1,000 emails to more than 400 accounts associated with IPAC. It's unclear how many of those email recipients opened them, but those who did unwittingly delivered data about the IP addresses of their devices, the location from where the email was opened, and what types of browsers or operating systems they use.

"The targets included every IPAC member from the European Union and 43 parliamentarians from the United Kingdom, the majority of whom were members of IPAC or had been mentioned in topics related to the government of the People's Republic of China," states the US Department of Justice's indictment cited by Europa Libera Romania.

Liberal deputy Alexandru Muraru told journalists he is not surprised that IPAC members were targets of hackers supported by the Beijing government.

The hackers targeted not only officials from IPAC but also politicians, institutions, businessmen, and companies from the United States of America. The period documented by the FBI is at least 14 years, from 2010 to the present.

Seven men of Chinese origin are wanted by the FBI in this case. The Bureau announced a reward of USD 10 million for information that will lead to their capture.