Cyber firm CrowdStrike observed a massive increase in China-linked cyberattacks and digital espionage in 2024, demonstrating the communist regime’s offensive cyber operations have achieved a new level of sophistication.

As China’s Typhoon hacking groups grabbed international headlines for breaking into American infrastructure and Western telecommunications companies, CrowdStrike detected Beijing-backed across many other sectors.

China-linked malicious cyber activity rose 150% year-over-year across all sectors that CrowdStrike tracks, according to a draft of the firm’s 2025 Global Threat Report.

The annual report, published on Thursday, showed the most dramatic upticks of China’s chaos hit the media, manufacturing, financial services, and industrial and engineering sectors. China’s hacks and cyberattacks increased by 200% to 300% against these sectors.

“The scariest statement that I’ve ever uttered, before Congress or any place else, is that after decades of investment into China’s offensive capabilities, they’re now on par with other world powers,” CrowdStrike Senior Vice President Adam Meyers told reporters. “China has really gone from this smash-and-grab kind of chaos of the early 2010 timeframe to now they are really a fully functioning offensive cyber capability.”

The report reveals China’s full-scale cyber toolkit was detected through its “higher operational tempo” compared to the previous year and through its more prolific targeting.

“Decades of government investment into China’s cyber workforce and programs have yielded matured capabilities and efficiencies as well as an increasing number of new, specialized China-nexus adversaries,” the draft version of the report said.

The logic behind China’s heightened focus on media institutions resembles some of its hacking efforts aimed at the global telecommunications sector, according to Mr. Meyers.

“We’ve seen them go after large media outlets to go downstream after their specific customers, very similar to what we’ve seen in the [telecommunications] space,” Mr. Meyers said. He said that once inside the systems of larger media institutions, the China-linked attackers turn their attention to specific individuals.

In the future, detecting China’s cyberattackers will likely prove more difficult to detect and defeat, the survey warns. CrowdStrike’s report said the cyberattackers’ response to tracking from private firms, government agencies and law enforcement was to redouble their efforts to obfuscate their operations.

• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.