The final piece of malware detected was a remote-access Trojan known as PlugX, which gives the attacker control over the victim’s computer. This enables access to the targeted victim’s sensitive data, account credentials, or financial information.
A secret agreement behind the phishing attempt
The Underground Church is loyal to the Catholic Church, not to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (an arm of the CCP). Because of this, the underground church has been experiencing intensifying persecution since the secretive Vatican-China accord was reached in September 2018.
For many years President Xi Jinping has put a premium on boosting government oversight throughout China on several religions, including ordering crosses to be torn down from over a thousand churches from 2014 to 2016 and, more recently, establishing highly criticized detention centers for ethnic Uighurs, most of whom are Muslim.
The CCP’s new national security law prescribes harsh penalties such as life imprisonment for vaguely defined crimes, which led to protests and arrests in Hong Kong.
