A stealth cyber army of hacked routers is helping Beijing vanish in plain sight.
Chinese state-backed hackers are covertly converting vulnerable IoT routers—especially Ruckus Wireless devices—into a stealth relay network dubbed “LapDogs,” using a custom backdoor called “ShortLeash” to hide espionage operations. These compromised nodes quietly route stolen data and mimic official sites like the LAPD using spoofed TLS certificates. Forensics tie the operation to Chinese actors through Mandarin code and coordinated infrastructure targeting the U.S., Japan, and other Asia-Pacific nations. The operation reflects a broader Chinese strategy: distributing shared cyber tools to multiple espionage groups for modular, decentralized attacks.
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