China-Linked Fire Ant Hijacks Cisco Routers to Steal Credentials and Blind Security Logs

A China-nexus cyber espionage actor tracked as Fire Ant has expanded a long-running campaign beyond VMware hypervisors to compromise Cisco IOS XR routers, Terminal Access Controller Access-Control System (TACACS) servers, and Linux management hosts used to route, authenticate, and manage high-value networks.

Sygnia, the incident response firm that investigated the intrusion, said the actor