{"id":451137,"date":"2026-09-02T14:46:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/451137\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T14:46:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:46:19","slug":"feds-in-san-diego-seize-domains-to-block-china-from-hacking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/451137\/","title":{"rendered":"Feds in San Diego seize domains to block China from hacking"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story originally appeared in The Center Square<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Federal law enforcement has seized core infrastructure reportedly used by a Chinese state-sponsored cyber platform to target high-profile U.S. government entities and critical infrastructure in a campaign dating back to 2018.<\/p>\n

Authorities said the hacking targets varied from NASA to the Federal Reserve.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI last week announced the court-authorized domain seizures targeting QScan and QTRouter, two cyber platforms that investigators said have ties to a Chinese group known as QTFY.<\/p>\n

Officials announcing the seizures included U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon for the Southern District of California, as well as Special Agent in Charge Mark Remily of the FBI San Diego Field Office.<\/p>\n

Authorities said QTFY worked through Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Co. to provide\u00a0hacking services to Chinese intelligence and military arms.<\/p>\n

Among QTFY\u2019s targets were NASA, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. departments of Energy, Justice, and Health and Human Services, as well as the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0court filings<\/a>,\u00a0the platforms infected thousands of devices worldwide to construct an obfuscation network that masked attack origins. Federal agents reportedly neutralized both tools by seizing hard-coded domains essential for the malware\u2019s communication.<\/p>\n

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said this sends a message to hackers worldwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cState-sponsored malicious hackers preying on America\u2019s critical infrastructure will be stopped and prosecuted,\u201d said Blanche in a\u00a0press release<\/a>. \u201cWe are here to ensure security for the American people and will use every tool we have to keep that promise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remily said the FBI remains relentless in its efforts to counter nation-state cyber actors, taking decisive action against those threatening the United States and its critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough complex investigations, aggressive technical operations, and strong partnerships, FBI San Diego will continue to identify, disrupt, and impose costs on our cyber adversaries,\u201d said Remily.<\/p>\n

Bryce G. Poole, senior legal fellow with the Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law at Advancing American Freedom, applauded law enforcement for its actions.<\/p>\n

Poole said this is exactly how the rule of law is supposed to work against state-sponsored cyber threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department of Justice went to a federal court. They got a lawful court order, court-authorized search warrants, and they disabled the tools, and they did this all through the court system,\u201d\u00a0Poole<\/a>\u00a0said during a phone interview with The Center Square. \u201cThey were able to do what they needed to do to protect our national security interests, and they did it through the court system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing to the various targets, Poole said this is not just a California problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it never was a local California problem because you\u2019re talking about Chinese state-sponsored Chinese hackers sponsored by the Chinese PRC,\u201d said Poole, referring to the People\u2019s Republic of China. \u201cEven if we set that aside and you would just say, \u2018Hey, these were local hackers in Southern California,\u2019 well, the targets were not local, and so this was aimed at the core machinery of the American government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ali Holcomb, a national security fellow at the organization Advancing American Freedom and former spokesperson for the national security division at DOJ during the first Trump administration, called for the current administration to be tough on China.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CCP [Chinese Communist Party] is our growing adversary and is weaponizing technological advances to target the U.S., be it AI, social media, or hacking platforms, like in this case,\u201d\u00a0Holcomb<\/a>\u00a0told The Center Square in an email. \u201cThe Trump administration should follow the steps of their first administration and reinstitute the China Initiative, to continue to highlight the growing threat from the CCP.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Center Square<\/a> provides high-quality statehouse and statewide news across the United States with a focus on government accountability and economic reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story originally appeared in The Center Square. Federal law enforcement has seized core infrastructure reportedly used by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3573,7045,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-451137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-china","tag-department-of-justice","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}