Kim Zetter reports on Intrusion Truth, a group working to unmask China’s state hackers. Her report begins:
In 2017, an anonymous person or group calling themselves Intrusion Truth launched a bold initiative — a blog devoted to uncovering and publicly exposing the real names of Chinese state hackers allegedly responsible for stealing billions of dollars worth of trade secrets from Western companies to bolster China’s industries.
Intrusion Truth’s work and accomplishments, detailed in Zetter’s reporting, are really impressive. But there are also concerns about anonymous hunters and the potential impact of their activities. Some of the group’s activities certainly raise the same ethical concerns that AgainstTheWest’s (ATW) documents raise because Intrusion Truth doxxes people who haven’t been charged with any crime and haven’t been sanctioned by the U.S. government. Similarly, in its most recent release on APT28, ATW provided personal information on an individual who is already known to the U.S., but also provided information on someone who has never been publicly named and isn’t on the sanctioned list. They have withheld that portion of their report from public viewing but provided it to the intelligence community indirectly.
Both group’s activities also run the potential risk of state-actor targets hacking back or doxxing U.S. individuals from the intelligence community in retaliation.
Not surprisingly, both IntrusionTruth and ATW often target the same APTs, with each seemingly finding and sharing unique information. Without providing specifics, ATW had informed this site that it has collaborated with Intrusion Truth in the past.
The groups’ relationship to DOJ and the intelligence community remains speculative, at best, with ATW declining to tell this site whether they receive any support from any western agency or government. ATW has claimed to be in the EU, but the identities and locations of members of both groups remains speculative.
You can read Zetter’s excellent report on Intrusion Truth here.
This site’s interview with ATW can be found here.
Intrusion Truth’s blog can be found here. As a relatively new group, ATW does not currently have its own blog, but informed DBN that it intends to compile its work in one article or site at some point.