Decade-Long Cyber-Spying Likely Tied To China Targeted Indian Sectors

"Another recurring theme in APT30's decoy documents relates to regionally contested territories, including Bhutan and Nepal," it said. "Nepal and Bhutan are important buffer states in China-India border conflicts and represent an opportunity to assert regional military dominance in Asia."

Outlining APT30 strategy, FireEye said it uses legitimate documents like reports or news articles that are embedded with malware as decoys to lure them. Once the victims access the email or the article, the malware infects them and allows the group to monitor the targets and gain access to their computers.

"APT30 leveraged the text of a legitimate academic journal on China's border security challenges in one of its decoy documents," it said. Another example it cites is an article on "the actual building and launch of India's first Indian-built aircraft carrier."

One of the tactics used by APT30 was creating fake web sites with addresses similar to legitimate one to trick Internet users, some registered as far back as 2004. "APT30 frequently registers their own DNS domains for use with malware command and control," the report said and cited aseanm.com, which appears to resemble the ASEAN's official site, asean.org, as an example.

FireEye said that Indian researchers also have discovered APT30 snooping suggesting that Indian researchers discovered APT30's suspicious activity at Indian organisations as well. "India-based users of VirusTotal have submitted APT30 malware to the service, suggesting that Indian researchers discovered APT30's suspicious activity at Indian organisations as well," it said. VirusTotal is a service that provides free scanning for viruses and malware.

Journalists reporting on issues like the economy, corruption and human rights were also targeted by APT30, the report said. These, it added, were "considered to be focal points for the Chinese Communist Party's sense of legitimacy."

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