Operation Soft Cell: Chinese Hackers Breach Middle East Telecom Providers

Telecommunication providers in the Middle East are the subject of new cyber attacks that commenced in the first quarter of 2023.
The intrusion set has been attributed to a Chinese cyber espionage actor associated with a long-running campaign dubbed Operation Soft Cell based on tooling overlaps.
"The initial attack phase involves infiltrating Internet-facing Microsoft Exchange servers to deploy

actor attack attacks breach campaign chinese chinese hackers cyber cyber attacks cyber espionage espionage exchange first quarter hackers internet intrusion microsoft microsoft exchange middle east operation soft cell servers telecom telecommunication telecommunication providers telecom providers tooling