China
China to build ground stations in Antartica to support ocean monitoring satellites
China, only the third country to put a man in space after the Soviet Union and United States, is to build ground stations on Antarctica to back its network of ocean monitoring satellites, state media said on Thursday.
Renders of the 43.95 million yuan ($6.52 million) project show four radome-covered antennas at China’s Zhongshan research base in East Antarctica. It is unknown if these are new and additional to antennas already established at the base.
The antennas will assist data acquisition from Chinese satellites that orbit in polar and near-polar orbits. Satellites in these orbits are visible near the poles multiple times a day, allowing more frequent opportunities for downlink than with stations at lower latitudes.
China has already launched eight Haiyang series ocean observation satellites into sun-synchronous orbits between 2002 and 2021, and plans more in the coming years. The first new-generation Haiyang-3 satellite is scheduled for launch this year, according the China’s main space contractor, CASC.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
China Satellites and Balloons used for Espionage?
China’s global network of ground stations to support a growing number of satellites and outer space ambitions has drawn concern from some nations that it could be used for espionage, a suggestion China rejects.
In 2020, Sweden’s state-owned space company, which had provided ground stations that helped fly Chinese spacecraft and transmit data, declined to renew contracts with China or accept new Chinese business due to “changes” in geopolitics.
The United States military shot down a Chinese spy balloon on Saturday that had spent the last week traversing the country. The balloon, which spent five days traveling in a diagonal southeast route from Idaho to the Carolinas, had moved off the coast by midday Saturday and was shot down within moments of its arrival over the Atlantic Ocean.
One of two F-22 fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base fired a Sidewinder air-to-air missile, downing the balloon, which was flying at an altitude of 60,000 to 65,000 feet. The F-22s were at 58,000 feet, with other American fighters in support.
In announcing the cancellation of his trip to China, U.S. Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken said the entry of the spy balloon was a “clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law.”
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
China Aerospace Science and Technology Group Co. is to build the stations at the Zhongshan research base, one of two permanent Chinese research stations on Antarctica, after winning the tender with its 43.95 million yuan ($6.53 million) bid, state-controlled China Space News reported.
Liftoff of a Long March 2C from Taiyuan carrying the Haiyang-1D ocean observation satellite on June 10, 2020. Image Credit: CASC
No technical details of the project were given in the report, though China Space News published two accompanying illustrations of an artist’s rendering that shows four ground stations at Zhongshan, located by Prydz Bay in East Antarctica, south of the Indian Ocean.
The project was part of broader initiatives aimed at building China’s marine economy and turning China into a marine power, according to China Space News.
References:
China is global IoT Superpower with 1.8 billion connections as of Dec 2022
As of December 2022, the number of connections for cellular Internet of Things (IoT) services hit 1.8 billion in China, accounting for 70 percent of the world’s total, according to the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
MIIT’s figures, which are based on data from three major telecommunication companies in China, show that the total number of terminal connections for mobile network have reached 3.528 billion, among which 1.845 billion are cellular IoT end users. The biggest proportion of the IoT services in China are using NB-IoT (the most popular 3GPP and ITU-R standard for cellular IoT), rather than LTE-M or other cellular IoT variant.
The ministry says four NB-IoT use cases have scaled to more than 10 million connections: water meters, gas meters, smoke detectors and tracking. Another seven, including agriculture and streetlights, have crossed the 1 million mark. The MIIT has also issued a breakdown of end-user terminal numbers, with 496 million deployed in public services, 375 million in internet of vehicles, 350 million in smart retail and 192 million in smart home. In area without service coverage, NB-IoT is deployed to achieve connectivity, such as soil sensors for smart agriculture.
China’s cellular IoT end users, for the first time, have surpassed that of mobile phone users by 161 million, accounting for 52.3 percent of the total, MIIT said.
Cellular IoT connects a wide variety of machines and devices, allowing them to communicate with each other by piggybacking on the cellular networks often used. Simply put, it facilitates massive data streams among sensors, actuators, etc., without building additional physical infrastructure.
While the IoT services are heavily applied across a myriad of industries, such as manufacturing, logistics, agriculture and transportation, cellular IoT modules fulfill a critical role as part of IoT systems or products in serving as the gateway for data transfer through 5G, 4G and LTE.
Government think tank CAICT predicts that by 2030 China will have tens of billions mobile IoT connections. The three operators, with their monopoly over communications infrastructure, will be at the center of this growth story.
In 2021 China Mobile reported 11.4 billion Chinese yuan (US$1.57 billion) in revenue from its IoT business, a 21% year-over-year (YoY) rise, with the number of connections 20% higher. It hasn’t yet reported revenue from 2022 but says total connections rose 14% to 1.2 billion, website C114 reported.
China Telecom’s 2021 IoT revenue was 2.9 billion yuan, while in the first three quarters of 2022, China Unicom claimed 366 million connections and 6.2 billion yuan in revenue, up 26% YoY.
The revenue numbers are low and will probably remain relatively so, but with this sort of growth rate, and with no external competitors, the telcos will be expecting their IoT portfolios to become a healthy niche income stream. However, while the growth numbers are good, we have no insight into the underlying cost or profitability of these IoT services. The obvious parallel is 5G, where the telcos have built networks and user numbers at huge scale but with limited returns so far.
China also leads in IoT silicon:
China also leads the world in supply of IoT chips. Counterpoint Research data shows that three Chinese companies – Quectel, Fibocom and Sunsea – accounted for half of the global mobile IoT module market in Q3. The no. 5 supplier is China Mobile, which has developed two types of RISC-V chips, and has shipped more than 100 million IoT chips. It has also sold more than 30 million OneOS operating system terminals.
With the expansion of 5G coverage, China is set to expand its IoT industry that covers chips, modules, terminals, software, platform and service. Meanwhile, its NB-IoT has been applied for smart metering, sensing, tracking and smart agriculture.
References:
FBI and MI5 Chiefs Issue Joint Warning: Chinese Cyber Espionage on Tech & Telecom Firms
Chinese government-backed hackers have attacked major telecom businesses throughout the world in a cyber-espionage effort that has lasted at least two years and has successfully compromised at least 13 telecommunications groups.
In a recent advisory, the FBI, NSA and CISA stated that hackers linked to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had targeted and hacked major telecommunications businesses by exploiting simple and well-known network and system vulnerabilities.
According to the report, Chinese espionage is often initiated with hackers surveying target networks and exploring the manufacturers, models, versions, and known vulnerabilities of routers and networking equipment using open-source scanning tools such as RouterSploit and RouterScan. The Chinese government consistently disputes charges of hacking.
The heads of the FBI and Britain’s domestic security service have just issued sharply worded warnings to business leaders about the threats posed by Chinese espionage, especially spying aimed at stealing Western technology companies’ intellectual property.
In a rare joint appearance on Wednesday July 6th at the headquarters of MI5 in the UK, Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Ken McCallum, director-general of MI5, urged executives not to underestimate the scale and sophistication of Beijing’s campaign.
“The Chinese government is set on stealing your technology—whatever it is that makes your industry tick—and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market,” Mr. Wray told the audience of business people.
“They’re set on using every tool at their disposal to do it.” China uses state-sponsored hacking on a large scale, along with a global network of intelligence operatives in its quest to gain access to technology it considers important, Messrs. Wray and McCallum said.
“The Chinese government poses an even more serious threat to Western businesses than even many sophisticated business people realize,” Mr. Wray added.
PHOTO CREDIT: DOMINIC LIPINSKI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“We want to send the clearest signal we can on a massive shared challenge—China,” Mr. Wray said in his appearance with his U.K. counterpart. Tackling the threat is essential, he said, “if we are to protect our economies, our institutions and our democratic values.”
“The most game-changing challenge we face comes from the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. McCallum said. “It’s covertly applying pressure across the globe. This might feel abstract, but it is real and it is pressing.”
China is engaged in “a coordinated campaign on a grand scale” that represents “a strategic contest across decades,” Mr. McCallum said. “We need to act.”
While American law enforcement and intelligence officials have been warning about the problem for years, it is a far more recent phenomenon for British security officials, who until last year made few public comments about the Chinese threat.
MI5 is running seven times more investigations involving Chinese espionage than it did in 2018, and plans to double the current number in the coming years, Mr. McCallum said.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The statement from the American security agencies did not name the victims of the hacking, nor did it specify the extent of the damage. However, US authorities did list specific networking equipment, such as routers and switches, that Chinese hackers are suspected of routinely targeting, exploiting serious and well-known flaws that basically gave the attackers full control over their targets.
Cisco, Citrix, Fortinet and Netgear equipment were among the most often attacked devices. Cisco and Netgear, according to the warning, have already published software updates for the majority of the identified vulnerabilities. The organizations recommended that operators take certain actions to minimize possible threats in addition to applying available patches and system upgrades. These include removing or isolating suspected compromised devices as soon as possible, segmenting the network to limit or prevent lateral movement, disabling unused or unnecessary network services, ports, protocols, and devices, and requiring multi-factor authentication for all users, including those connected via a VPN.
For intelligence organizations, telecommunications companies are particularly valuable targets. These service providers develop and operate the majority of the Internet’s infrastructure, as well as numerous private networks throughout the world. Successfully hacking of these networks can open the door to an even larger universe of valuable surveillance opportunities.
References:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/heads-of-fbi-mi5-issue-joint-warning-on-chinese-spying-11657123280
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/world/asia/fbi-china-taiwan-sanctions.html
