How Chinese Hacking Entered a New Phase of Recklessness It’s been years, China it seems to operate at the quietest end of the state-protected hacking spectrum. While Russia and North Korea carried out hack-and-leak operations, cracked down on cyberattacks and blurred the line between cybercriminals and intelligence agencies, China quietly paid special attention to traditional (if fertile) espionage and intellectual property theft. But a collective message received by dozens of countries today calls for a change in China’s online behavior, and the trace of the chaos of its cyber intelligence agency is increasingly against the Kim regime or the Kremlin.