COVID-19 Isn’t the only virus coming out of China

Press Release: March 24, 2020.

Coronavirus has been in the news since January. The virus, allegedly originating out of China, has caused a global pandemic. But COVID-19 is not the only virus originating out of China.

During the past two weeks Country IP Blocks has been monitoring large scale cyber attacks also allegedly originating from China. These attacks are centered around compromising email servers, so large-scale influxes of Ransomware and other virus, trojans, etc., can be released into the wild. The attacks are also looking for server vulnerabilities so malicious files can be stored on your servers.

Country IP blocks is issuing the following alert: If you are not doing business in or with China at this time, we recommend that you quarantine your network and systems by blocking all cyber traffic from China for a limited time. If you are doing business with China, we recommend you take steps to carefully examine all cyber traffic from China.

We realize this is an unprecedented step, but the danger is great. As a courtesy, we are releasing a free, aggregated list, in CIDR format, of all China networks. This ACL is available for download at https://www.countryipblocks.net/downloads/china_aggregated.txt.

This ACL list may be used in your hardware or software firewalls until further notice.