China’s Evolving Playbook:The Combination of Hack-and-Leak and Influence Operations

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Presented at Code Blue 2024 by

Li-an Huang

Chih-yun Huang

As we approach the largest election year in history, 2024 is already shadowed by China’s influence operations (IO) aiming to destabilize the democratic systems. Since 2023, Chinese threat actors have launched multiple IO campaigns targeting elections, including an evolving tactic that merges the hack-and-leak with IO campaigns. In the first part of the presentation, we will introduce Chinese threat actors’ newly developed tactics, specifically the combination of hack-and-leak tactics with IO campaigns. We will elaborate on how China learned and advanced Russia’s playbook to influence the election with asserted leaked documents within our real-world case study from the 2024 Taiwan presidential election. At the same time, the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology has enhanced threat actors’ capability. In the second part of the presentation, we will demonstrate how Chinese threat actors apply AI for such hack-and-leak and IO campaigns. The integration of AI, hack-and-leak, and IO allows the threat actors to create disinformation that targets broader audiences with ease. As billions of people are heading to vote in the rest of 2024, including the critical U.S. presidential election in November, the stakes have never been higher. Alarmingly, with the enhanced capability, Chinese threat actors have expanded their target scope from presidential candidates to include legislators. The expansion serves as a dire warning as individual legislators often lack the resources to defend against influence operations. We will conclude the presentation by providing mitigation strategies and policy recommendations aiming to counter the threat at an early stage.