Last month, Apple announced that it would hand over management of its Chinese iCloud data to a local, state-owned firm in China called Cloud Big Data Industrial Development Co at the end of February in order to comply with new laws.

Now, experts are reporting that Apple will also hold iCloud encryption keys for Chinese users in China itself, raising new concerns about government access. The new policy does not affect any iCloud users outside of China. Compliance means Chinese authorities will have easier access to user data that’s stored in Apple’s iCloud service, especially now that, for the first time, Apple will store the keys for Chinese iClouds within China.

Chinese online retailer JD.com has beaten Amazon to the next stage of the shopping revolution by announcing plans to open hundreds of "unmanned" convenience stores. The shops have already been trialled with JD's 10,000 employees at headquarters in Beijing and use facial and recognition technology to register payment and product identity, meaning that customers do not have to wait in a checkout line.

JD explained that cameras on the ceilings of the stores can recognize customers’ movement and generate heat maps of their activity to monitor customer traffic flow, product selection and customer preferences, which helps store owners to stock efficiently.  

D.J.I., the popular drone maker, stands as a symbol of China’s growing technology prowess. Its propeller-powered machines dominate global markets and buzz regularly over beaches, cityscapes at sunset and increasingly, power plants and government installations.

Now D.J.I. is fighting a claim by one United States government office that its commercial drones and software may be sending sensitive information about American infrastructure back to China, in the latest clash over the power of data in the growing technological rivalry between the two countries.

The authors of the WannaCry malware are probably from the southern mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore, according to a US intelligence company. Forensic linguistic analysis on the malware suggested it was written by native Chinese-speaking people with southern accents.

In a report on its website, Flashpoint, which provides global business-risk intelligence, said it came to the conclusion with “high confidence”. Earlier reports based on code analysis suggested North Korean programmers at work. The WannaCry malware locked up data on infected computers and displayed a message in 28 languages demanding a ransom for restoration of the data.

Two laptops containing personal information of Hong Kong's 3.7 million registered voters have been stolen. The laptops were reported missing by Hong Kong's electoral office, in what could be the city's largest data breach. They were reportedly stolen from a locked room on Lantau Island, off the main Hong Kong island.

The room was a designated backup venue for the chief executive elections held over the weekend. The stolen data included names, addresses and identity card numbers of voters, the office said in a statement. The data was encrypted, so it'll be a lot harder — albeit not impossible — for information to be leaked.

Chinese Hackers have taken Smishing attack to the next level, using rogue cell phone towers to distribute Android banking malware via spoofed SMS messages.

SMiShing — phishing attacks sent via SMS — is a type of attack wherein fraudsters use number spoofing attack to send convincing bogus messages to trick mobile users into downloading a malware app onto their smartphones or lures victims into giving up sensitive information. Security researchers have uncovered that Chinese hackers are using fake base transceiver stations to distribute "Swearing Trojan," an Android banking malware that once appeared neutralized after its authors were arrested in a police raid.

Security officials in China’s violence-stricken north-west have ordered residents to install GPS tracking devices in their vehicles so authorities are able to keep permanent tabs on their movements.

The compulsory measure is being rolled out in the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang, a sprawling region that borders Central Asia and sees regular eruptions of deadly violence. The move comes amid an apparent spike in killing that authorities blame on Islamist extremists and separatists but experts say is also fuelled by ethnic friction between Han Chinese migrants and members of the predominantly Muslim Uighur minority to whom Xinjiang is home.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has announced a 14-month "clean up" of internet access services, which includes a crackdown on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The new regulations require VPN services to obtain government approval before operating.

Using a VPN without permission is also prohibited. VPNs use encryption to disguise internet traffic, allowing users in China to bypass the Great Firewall to access censored and restricted websites. The services typically cost around $10 a month. China's vast censorship apparatus prevents the country's 730 million internet users from accessing information on sensitive subjects.

A series of security breaches that stuck prestigious law firms last year was more pervasive than reported and was carried out by people with ties to the Chinese government, according to evidence seen by journalists.

The incidents involved hackers getting into the email accounts of partners at well-known firms, and then relaying messages and other data from the partners’ in-boxes to outside servers. In the case of one firm, the attacks took place over a 94 day period starting in March of 2015, and resulted in the hackers stealing around seven gigabytes of data. That figure would typically amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of emails.

Chinese spies repeatedly infiltrated US national security agencies, including official email accounts, and stole US secrets on Pentagon war plans for a future conflict with China, according to a forthcoming congressional commission report.

“The United States faces a large and growing threat to its national security from Chinese intelligence collection operations,” states the late draft report of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “Among the most serious threats are China’s efforts at cyber and human infiltration of US national security entities.” The report identified repeated infiltrations by Chinese spies of US national security entities.