Jian is Chinese malware copied from the USA
The article highlights how part of the malware code is so similar that it is assumed to be plagiarism. Jian would be "a kind of emulator, a Chinese replica": this is how Yaniv Balmas, head of the research group, describes him to Reuters. It is now known that many nations develop malware to spy on other states. Most of these malware take advantage of software flaws to gain access to rival devices. Whenever a flaw emerges, spy agencies and CDs. secret services choose whether to "plug it" or try to exploit it to their advantage.
Between 2016 and 2017, the hacker group Shadow Brokers had published some software codes used for espionage by the NSA. These programs are believed to be part of the suite of cyber threats known as the "Equation Group". According to some insiders close to Lockheed Martin Corp, a US company active in the aerospace engineering, defense and new technologies sectors and responsible for having detected the vulnerability that would have made public the material to which Jian is "inspired", the publication of part of the code was determined by the intervention of an unidentified "third party".
Check Point tried to piece together Jian's development history. Created as early as 2014, only later would it be “enriched” with the pieces of code published by Shadow Brokers. Unfortunately, researchers have not been able to reconstruct how it was used after 2017. Microsoft, in a security advisory also reported in 2017, traced the development of Jian to a Chinese entity, called "Zirconium". This entity has also been accused of organizing hacker attacks on organizations and individuals that supported Joe Biden's 2020 US presidential candidacy.
Not the first time the NSA has suffered cyberattacks: Symantec, company of Cybersecurity known for Norton AntiVirus defense suite and owned by Broadcom Inc, reported another data leak as early as 2019. According to Costin Raiu, director of Kaspersky Lab's “Global Research & Analysis” team, Check Point's research it is thorough and “seems correct.”
The report ends with a series of expert opinions, calling on US spies to fix flaws in their software rather than developing and distributing malware online. Neither the NSA nor the Chinese embassy in the US wanted to comment on the news.
Yaniv Balmas said he hopes this report will help convince security agencies to report and plug software flaws, rather than exploit them for espionage. "Perhaps - he told Reuters - it is more important to patch this weakness and save the world [...] Why (this flaw, ed.) Could be used against you".
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