A hacker group backed by the Chinese regime has exploited vulnerabilities in the online systems of at least six U.S. state governments in order to compromise and gain access to those networks, cybersecurity firm Mandiant said March 8. Mandiant’s lengthy report presents the findings of an investigation that began in the spring of 2021, in response to a breach by a hacker group known as “APT41” of an unnamed state government’s system, and continued through last month. “Our investigation into APT41 activity between May 2021 and February 2022 uncovered evidence of a deliberate campaign targeting U.S. state governments. During this timeframe, APT41 successfully compromised at least six U.S. state government networks through the exploitation of vulnerable Internet facing web applications, often written in ASP.NET,” the report stated. ASP.NET, developed by Microsoft, is an open-source web framework enabling users to construct internet apps and services on the .NET platform. The weaknesses …