2024-02-19T16:22:59+00:00
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/ The Director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, warned on Monday that Chinese cyber attacks on US infrastructure have become unprecedentedly widespread.
Beijing’s efforts to covertly plant offensive malware inside critical infrastructure networks in the United States are now “on a larger scale than we’ve seen before,” Wray told the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, calling it a national security issue, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Wray focused his talk on a China-based hacking network called Volt Typhoon that the United States uncovered last month, said it had dismantled and accused of hacking into sensitive U.S. infrastructure networks with the aim of disabling them in the event of a conflict.
Microsoft confirmed that it had detected “cyber activity” carried out by a Chinese group that is infiltrating critical infrastructure networks in the United States, while Washington and its allies warned of similar attacks that may occur in several countries around the world.
“Beijing-backed entities are pre-positioning malware that can be launched at any moment to disrupt critical US infrastructure,” Ray said.
The FBI director said this was just one example of “many similar efforts by the Chinese.”
Ray declined to provide details on what critical infrastructure was targeted, stressing that the office has “a lot of work going on.”
In testimony before a House subcommittee on January 1, Wray warned that China was planning a large-scale hacking operation aimed at destroying the U.S. power grid, oil pipelines and water systems in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.
Before his testimony, FBI and Justice Department officials revealed that last month they had obtained a court order allowing them to access the servers that the Vault Typhoon network had hacked.
Earlier this month, Dutch military intelligence announced the discovery of malware planted in a computer network used by its army, blaming a Chinese government agency for the attack.
Beijing denies accusations of cyber attacks and espionage, and has accused the United States of launching its own cyber attacks.
But evidence of a Chinese state-backed program has begun to emerge in recent years, and the United States has accused officers from the Chinese military’s cyber units of stealing secrets, according to the Wall Street Journal.