FBI Director Warns Chinese Hackers Are Attacking Critical Infrastructure in United States

Hackers from the Chinese regime are attacking water treatment plants, electrical grids, transportation systems and other critical infrastructure inside the United States, the FBI director warned Wednesday. Christopher RayIn a fresh warning from Washington about Beijing’s global ambitions, lawmakers in the House of Representatives.

Underscoring the threat, the Justice Department and the FBI announced before the hearing that they had broken up Botnet Hundreds of US-based home and small office routers owned by private citizens and businesses, and hijacked by Chinese state hackers to cover their tracks and hide their origins while seeding malware.

Speaking before the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Ray said: “Too little public attention” has been given to the cyber threat that affects “all Americans.”

“Chinese hackers are embedding themselves in American infrastructure and preparing to wreak real havoc and harm on American citizens and communities, Until China decides it’s time to attack.”Ray said.

Jane Easterly, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division, echoed similar sentiments at the hearing.

“This is a world where a major crisis on the other side of the planet can threaten the lives of Americans here at home.” By disrupting our oil and gas pipelines, cutting our telecommunicationsThe contamination of our water facilities, the paralysis of our means of transport, all to ensure that they can fuel social panic and chaos and inhibit our ability to respond,” he said.

The comments align with assessments from outside cybersecurity firms such as Microsoft, which said in May that state-backed Chinese hackers are attacking critical US infrastructure and may be laying the technological foundations. For possible disruption of critical communications between the United States and Asia during a future crisis.

That’s thanks to a group of hackers known as Operation Volt Typhoon, has been disrupted after FBI and Justice Department officials obtained a search and seizure warrant in a federal court in Texas. Hackers infiltrated targets through multiple routes, including cloud and Internet providers, disguising themselves as normal traffic.

In recent years, the United States has become more aggressive in its efforts to disrupt and dismantle both criminal and state-sponsored cyber operations. But hackers backed by Xi Jinping’s regime, especially Chinese and Russian, are good at adapting and finding new methods and infiltration paths.

“Today, and literally every day, they are actively attacking our economic security, stealing our innovation and our personal and corporate data wholesale,” Wray said, referring to China.

US authorities have long been concerned about the possibility of such hackers hiding in US-based infrastructure, and Cisco and Netgear routers, which have reached the end of their useful lives and were exploited by Typhoon Volt, were easy prey because their manufacturers They were no longer providing security updates. Because of the urgency, according to law enforcement, American cyber operators removed the malware from those routers without notifying their owners directly, and added code to protect them from reinfection.

A Justice Department official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity under government-mandated ground rules, said the officials were committed. Disrupt Operation Vault Typhoon As soon as possible because hackers were using Botnet Poised to maliciously exploit that access at a time of their choosing, as a springboard to hide in US Internet traffic while infiltrating critical infrastructure networks.

China has dismissed the US government’s allegations as baseless. Beijing has accused the United States of conducting “almost daily” and “massive intrusions against the Chinese government” and Wang Wenbin“China is the biggest victim of cyber attacks,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said last year.

But the general Paul NakasoneThe outgoing commander of the United States Cyber ​​Command said that “responsible cyber actors” do not attack civilian infrastructure.

“There’s no reason for them to be in our waters,” Nakason said. “There is no reason for them to be in our possession.”

Testifying before the same committee on Tuesday, Leon Panetta, who was director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and secretary of defense in the Obama administration, said he believed Chinese agents “planted malware into our own computer networks.” And warned. That the Chinese government will use artificial intelligence to spread disinformation.

The commission, chaired by a Republican representative Michael Gallagher, from Wisconsin, was created last year with a mandate to counter Chinese influence, and it took off with prime-time audiences. The Chinese regime has lashed out at the committee, demanding that its members “abandon their ideological bias and Cold War zero-support mentality.”

(with information from AP)