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“Volt Typhoon” – US authorities: real threat from Chinese hackers – News

15 February 2024

Contents

The group’s attack was revealed some time ago. Now the authorities have announced some details about “Volt Typhoon”.

For years, Chinese hackers from the “Volt Typhoon” group had access to US infrastructure such as electricity and water. The machinations became known last May.

In December 2023, the FBI cut off the hackers’ access to the attacked systems. Now, for the first time, the US authorities have provided more detailed information about what it is about.

Critical infrastructure in sight

According to FBI information, “Volt Typhoon” quietly penetrated the networks of aviation, rail, mass transit, highway, shipping, pipeline, water or wastewater organizations in the United States.

If all of these systems fail, it would be difficult for the United States to respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

The hackers infected routers with the intention of being able to shut down critical infrastructure systems at any time. The FBI describes this as a “strategic shift in tactics” by Chinese hackers.

The “Volt Typhoon” hackers took an extremely cautious approach and did not directly attack the operators of critical infrastructure. Rather, they created a so-called botnet. Thousands of private devices such as routers and modems are infected with a virus. From these devices they then penetrated the actual attack targets. This was also done very carefully. For example, the attacks only took place during US office hours in order not to attract attention.

The FBI believes the sabotage of critical U.S. infrastructure may have been initiated by the Chinese the moment they launched an attack on Taiwan.

“If all of these systems fail, it would lead to chaos in the USA – and make it much more difficult to respond to the attack in the Far East,” says SRF digital editor Tanja Eder.

Not espionage, but sabotage

The activities of “Volt Typhoon” appear to be aimed less at espionage and more at sabotage.

It is unclear whether “Volt Typhoon” was or is also active in Switzerland. SRF digital editor Tanja Eder assumes that the critical infrastructure in Switzerland is no better protected against hacker attacks than in the USA. But: “China is probably focusing on a few target countries with “Volt Typhoon”. This requires a lot of manual work by computer specialists.”

However, it is quite possible or even very likely that Switzerland is or could become the target of other hackers. One thing is certain: The Federal Cybersecurity Office has been working closely with the operators of critical infrastructure in Switzerland for many years to prevent possible cyber attacks.

While Beijing denies that the hacker group is supported by the Chinese state, the US authorities believe that it is a “state-sponsored actor” from China, as a US official said.

The US may not be the only one affected by Chinese hacker attacks on critical infrastructure. Great Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand also adopted the warning from the US authorities about “Volt Typhoon”.

US government works with private individuals

In view of the many organizations and companies under attack, there have been numerous meetings between US government representatives and the private US technology industry in recent weeks.

According to the authorities, these included primarily telecommunications and cloud computing companies. The White House asked for support in the measures against the Chinese hacker group.