China cyber espionage up by 150 percent in 2024: Report

China's cyber espionage operations continue to become more aggressive amid the increasing use of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to help carry out attacks, according to a report published Thursday.

CrowdStrike's 2025 Global Threat Report, released Thursday, found China-linked cyber operations surged by 150 percent last year. Attacks targeting the financial services, media, manufacturing and industrial sectors increased by 200 percent to 300 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year, the report added.

The Hill reached out to the Chinese Embassy in Washington for further comment.

Current and former government officials have increasingly warned of China-backed efforts targeting American intellectual property, but also the critical infrastructure Americans rely on every day.

The cybersecurity firm also found adversaries are increasingly using AI to carry out these attacks, especially those involving phishing or impersonation tactics.

Over the course of 2024, voice phishing attacks, during which adversaries call victims, increased by 442 percent, the report stated.

"From fictious profiles to AI-generated emails and websites," the report stated, adversaries "are using genAI to supercharge insider threats and social engineering."

"Along with legitimate organizations, easy access to commercial large language models (LLMs) is making adversaries more productive, too," the report added. "It’s shortening their learning curve and development cycles, and it’s allowing them to increase the scale and pace of their activities."

CrowdStrike noted the AI-powered tactics are becoming harder to detect and called on organizations to bolster their defenses accordingly.

Despite the increasing malicious use of AI, it is still "largely iterative and evolutionary" and there is rarely a use case that is entirely new, the firm noted.

CrowdStrike said it is harnessing AI itself to help its clients anticipate cyber attacks and defend against them.

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