by Carly Page at Tech Crunch
The U.S. government announced Wednesday it had disrupted a China-backed hacking operation targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, amid warnings that Beijing is preparing to cause “real-world harm” to Americans in the event of a future conflict.
Speaking during a U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing on cyber threats posed by China, FBI director Christopher Wray told lawmakers: “China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities, if or when China decides the time has come to strike.”
Wray described the ongoing activity by a China-backed hacking group dubbed Volt Typhoon as “the defining threat of our generation,” and said the attackers’ goal is to “disrupt our military’s ability to mobilize” in the early stages of an anticipated conflict over Taiwan, which China claims as its territory.
Jen Easterly, the director of the U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA, testified during the hearing that “very basic” flaws underpinning critical infrastructure in the U.S. have “made it easy” for China-backed hackers to target its systems.
“We have seen Chinese threat actors, including those known as Volt Typhoon, burying deep in our critical infrastructure to enable destructive attacks in the event of a major crisis or conflict,” said Easterly. “This is a world where a major crisis halfway across the world will endanger the lives of Americans through the disruption of our pipelines, the severing of our telecommunications, the pollution of our water facilities, and the crippling of our transportation.”
Volt Typhoon is a state-sponsored group of hackers based in China typically…
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