Will Chinese cyberespionage be more aggressive in 2025? CrowdStrike thinks so

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Critical industries could see an attack spike of up to 300%

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  • CrowdStrike's Global Threat Report highlights worrying threats
  • Chinese state-sponsored actors have increased activities, report claims
  • Generative AI is also allowing attackers to evolve quickly

We’re still in the early days of 2025, but CrowdStrike’s Global Threat Report has laid out what cybersecurity teams should expect for the coming year. The latter half of 2024 saw the vulnerability threat landscape evolve, with the adoption of generative AI giving a huge boost to social engineering attacks across the world.

CrowdStrike identified seven new ‘China-nexus’ adversaries in 2024, with Chinese sponsored attacks surging 150% overall. Some industries suffered a 200%-300% increase in attack activity year-on-year, most significantly in financial services, media, manufacturing, and engineering sectors.

Worryingly, critical targets like government agencies, technology, and telecommunications sectors also suffered a 50% increase in Chinese threat actor incidents compared to 2023. That won’t come as too much of a surprise for most, especially given the high-profile Salt Typhoon attack which breached 9 major telecom firms in late 2025.

AI attacks

Generative AI is lowering the barrier to entry for cybercriminals, and is a tool which makes cybercrime more accessible. Most cybersecurity teams will tell you the frequency of attacks that criminals are able to leverage has skyrocketed with AI, but the tech also allows for the creation of more and more convincing scams, especially social engineering scams.

CrowdStrike’s research shows deepfake video and voice clones are used to scam companies and individuals, so cybersecurity teams will likely need to shift some focus to tackling the threat of deepfakes in the workplace.

Looking forward, the vulnerability exploitation landscape “remains a critical concern”, with threat actors expected to aggressively target flawed devices and end-of-life products, so CrowdStrike reaffirms the importance of being proactive with patches, software updates, and hardware upgrades.

These trends are expected to continue to evolve into 2025, given rising geopolitical tensions and the development of new technologies which will more than likely allow cybercriminals to carry out more frequent and sophisticated attacks.

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Ellen Jennings-Trace
Ellen Jennings-Trace
Staff Writer

Ellen has been writing for almost four years, with a focus on post-COVID policy whilst studying for BA Politics and International Relations at the University of Cardiff, followed by an MA in Political Communication. Before joining TechRadar Pro as a Junior Writer, she worked for Future Publishing’s MVC content team, working with merchants and retailers to upload content.

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