10mo ago

FBI says Chinese hackers are inside US infrastructure to cause ‘devastating blow’

www.independent.co.uk FBI says Chinese hackers are inside US infrastructure to cause ‘devastating blow’

China wants to target critical infrastructure like water facilities and energy grids, FBI director said

China wants to target critical infrastructure like water facilities and energy grids, FBI director said

Chinese state-sponsored hackers have conducted widespread cyberattacks on critical American infrastructure in recent years, intending to give the country the ability to cause “a devastating blow” against the US, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“The fact is, the PRC People’s Republic of China] targeting of our critical infrastructure is both broad and unrelenting,” he told a security conference in Nashville on Thursday, describing China’s hacking programme as growing in strength.

“It’s using that mass, those numbers, to give itself the ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing,” he added.

Last year, security analysts at Microsoft identified mysterious code linked to communications systems in Guam, the US territory in the Pacific with a massive strategic air base.

Officials believe the code was the work of Volt Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group.

25 comments

I'll never understand how our infrastructure isn't on a completely separate air gapped network.
Obviously they need to share data in house, but the government absolutely has the resources to run their own separate intranet that's not at all connected to the global internet, and yet they just plug their shit into consumer lines and hope their security is up to snuff.
- Sometimes an airgap isn't enough (Stuxnet is a good example), but realistically cybersecurity is an afterthought unfortunately. Simply go onto Shodan and lookup Schneider or Allen-Bradley to see how many of these controllers are accessible directly from the internet
  
  Dont understate the effectiveness of offline networks.
- They don't even need to run a separate network. The NSA has long since figured out a way to move secure data over an insecure network. The problem is that most of the US's infrastructure is run by "for profit" companies. And since they are neither required, not is it profitable, to have robust security, they don't. Instead, they do the bare minimum to be compliant with whatever frameworks they are required to. And since basically every one of those compliance frameworks is all about having the right documentation and never actually audit systems directly, their actual security is shit.
  If you want companies to start taking security seriously, then we need GDPR style fines when companies get breached and are found to be running operating system and software which is years out of date. Compliance frameworks also need to get into the nitty-gritty details of OS and software configuration and not just "have a baseline".

I mean a lot of government shit is still on the old cobol code.
- You can't upgrade when congress won't allocate money for your department to do so. Or raise the taxes necessary to raise that money.
  
  Fuck raising taxes (unless it's only rich fucks and corporations then I'm OK with it) they can take 1% of that infinite money stream they have running for the defense budget. We don't $1 trillion for the military

Here is a link to the Independent story above without the tracker bullshit.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/china-hackers-fbi-wray-infrastructure-b2531182.html
- No, it is not.
  Last year, security analysts at Microsoft identified mysterious code linked to communications systems in Guam, the US territory in the Pacific with a massive strategic air base.
  is currently pointing to:
  hxxps://clicks[.]trx-hub[.]com/xid/esimedia_t58ukgmjkf95_theindependent?q=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.redirectingat.com%2F%3Fid%3D44681X1458326%26url%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2023%252F07%252F29%252Fus%252Fpolitics%252Fchina-malware-us-military-bases-taiwan.html%253Fsmid%253Durl-share%26sref%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fchina-hackers-fbi-wray-infrastructure-b2531182.html&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fchina-hackers-fbi-wray-infrastructure-b2531182.html&article_id=2531182&author=Josh+Marcus&tag=FBI%2CHackers%2Cinfrastructure%2CChristopher+Wray%2CMicrosoft&section=World&category=Americas&sub_category=&updated_time=2024-04-18T23%3A19%3A22.000Z&utm_campaign=news-body&utm_term=B-1&utm_content=&utm_medium=mobile&ref=ground.news&utm_source=ground.news&fbclid=&gclid=

On the 225 in Denver Wednesday night, northbound, there was an enormous section of the road, at least five miles, where two lanes were closed. No workers working. None of the road was torn up. Just comes closing all but one lane for miles.
Traffic was at a crawl. I had passengers in my car and we crept along for maybe 15 minutes through this weird phantom “work zone”.
The weirdest part is that the google maps traffic data showed the whole stretch of road as solid green, despite the fact we were going like 5-10 mph with frequent stoppage in a 75 mph zone.
- Covert Chinese Cones Cause Colorado Car Crawl!
  
  Fuckin spectacular

25 comments