The middlemen of cyber espionage.
Today we have Damon Rouse, Threat Intelligence from Lumen's Black Lotus Labs, discussing their work on "The infrastructure quartermaster: inside a China-nexus state enablement model." Black Lotus Labs identified a China-nexus cyber infrastructure provider, dubbed a “quartermaster,” that supplies reconnaissance, proxy routing, and obfuscation services to Chinese cyber espionage actors.
Its interconnected systems, including QScan and Fast Labyrinth, help identify high-value targets, conceal malicious traffic, and support potential exploitation of government, military, research, and critical infrastructure networks. Researchers warn that this shared infrastructure makes traditional IP-based defenses less effective and recommend following CISA and NCSC guidance, reducing external attack surfaces, and keeping routers, firewalls, and IoT devices updated.
