The FBI shut down a major China-backed hacking group that attacked hundreds of routers and had been working to compromise U.S. cyber infrastructure, FBI Director Christopher Wray announced Wednesday at a House committee hearing.
The group, code-named “Volt Typhoon,” hacked into hundreds of office and home-office routers to allow the Chinese government to access their data, Wray told the committee. He said the routers were outdated, which made them “easy targets.”
The Justice Department and FBI identified the attacks and shut down aspects of the Volt Typhoon malware, Wray said.
The hackers had been targeting U.S. water treatment plants, the power grid, oil and natural gas pipelines, and transportation systems, he added.
“Today, and literally every day, they’re actively attacking our economic security, engaging in wholesale theft of our innovation, and our personal and corporate data,” he said.
Microsoft in May warned that Volt Typhoon hackers had been active since 2021 and were targeting U.S. cyber infrastructure. The company urged impacted customers to change their security details.
The hacks have become increasingly sophisticated, Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said at the hearing. She explained that Chinese hackers are able to “live within a computer’s operating system” in a way that makes them difficult to identify.
“They’ve elevated their ability to act like a system administrator so you really can’t tell that’s a Chinese actor,” Easterly said.
Given the current presidential race, Wray added that the FBI was specifically focused on preventing Chinese election interference. The Chinese government has done it before: Ahead of Taiwan’s recent presidential election, the self-governing island reported several China-backed disinformation campaigns aimed at influencing their election.
Wray said that an app like TikTok already gives the Chinese Communist Party a possible avenue into the U.S. election since it collects Americans’ private user data and is beholden to Chinese government mandates. Also on Wednesday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about child safety on social media.
The officials’ comments add to a slew of warnings about the threat of China to U.S. cybersecurity. In July, Chinese hackers also compromised the email accounts of the U.S. ambassador to China and other officials.
Wray himself has been ringing alarm bells on China for years. In February 2022, he told NBC News that he was shocked to learn how widespread Chinese spying had become when he became FBI director. Later that year, he joined British officials in London to issue another warning about Chinese national security threats, including the country’s intention to invade the self-governing island of Taiwan.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Read the full article here