Exclusive: `Concealed, adaptable' weapon of NSA's cyberattack on leading Chinese aviation university exposed | Global Times |

Cyberattack was launched on the email system of Northwestern Polytechnical University in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province - well-known for its aviation, aerospace and navigation studies.

On September 5, a Chinese technical team announced that by extracting many trojans samples from internet terminals of Northwestern Polytechnical University, under the support of European and South Asian partners, it initially identified that the cyberattack to the university was conducted by the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) (Code S32) under the Data Reconnaissance Bureau (Code S3) of the Information Department (Code S) of US' NSA.

Aiming at Northwestern Polytechnical University, TAO used 41 types of weapons to steal the core technology data including key network equipment configuration, network management data, and core operational data. The technical team discovered more than 1,100 attack links had infiltrated inside the university and more than 90 operating instruction sequences, which stole multiple network device configuration files, and other types of logs and key files, the team said.