UK Sanctions Chinese Cyber Companies i-Soon and Integrity Tech Under Cyber Sanctions Regime

Mechanism

On 9 December 2025 the UK government designated two China-based commercial cyber companies under its Cyber sanctions regime (Cyber (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, administered by OFSI/FCDO), via Financial Sanctions Notice 09/12/2025 (Cyber). The designations impose an asset freeze and controls on commercial transactions and investment instruments involving the two entities, effective immediately from the announcement date.

• Sichuan Anxun Information Technology Co Ltd ("i-Soon") — designated for targeting over

80 government and private-industry IT systems across the world, and for supporting other actors planning malicious cyber activity. The UK assessment states i-Soon facilitated and supported a wider ecosystem of China-based information-security companies enabling unauthorised access to and interference with information systems and data, including UK public-sector and private-industry targets.

• Integrity Technology Group Incorporated ("Integrity Tech") — designated for controlling

and managing a covert botnet network of over 260,000 compromised devices worldwide and supplying access to that network to enable unauthorised access to and interference with information systems and data targeting UK public-sector IT systems.

The UK government frames both firms as part of a broader Chinese commercial cyber industry — including information-security companies, data brokers, and "hackers for hire" — that provides services to Chinese intelligence services, following on from the August 2025 exposure of three additional China-based companies linked to the Salt Typhoon campaign.

Downstream implications

• First UK Cyber-regime designations naming specific China-based commercial cyber companies by

name (rather than state actors or individuals), extending the UK's economic-security toolkit against China's commercial cyber-offensive ecosystem.

• Asset freeze and transaction controls create compliance screening obligations for UK

financial institutions and any UK counterparties with commercial links to Chinese ICT/cyber vendors, adding a China-specific dimension to existing OFSI sanctions-list screening regime.

• Likely to be read alongside parallel US Treasury/Commerce action against China-linked cyber

actors (e.g. Salt Typhoon-linked entities) as part of a broader Western pattern of sanctioning named Chinese cyber-offensive firms rather than only state or military entities.

• Watch for UK follow-on designations naming additional companies in the same "hackers for

hire" ecosystem, and for parallel EU/US action against the same or related entities.

Open questions

• Whether the US, EU, or other Five Eyes partners will designate the same two entities, and

whether this becomes a coordinated multilateral cyber-sanctions perimeter against China.

• Scale of the two firms' UK-linked assets or commercial exposure actually captured by the

freeze (not disclosed in the primary announcement).

• Whether further UK Cyber-regime designations will follow against the wider ecosystem of

China-based information-security companies referenced in the announcement.