Chinese hacking operations have entered a far more dangerous phase, US warns

China’s cyber activity is moving beyond the last decade’s spying and data theft toward direct attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure, the directors of the FBA, NSA, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, told lawmakers on Wednesday. 

The Volt Typhoon hacking group is planting malware on network routers and other internet-connected devices that, if triggered, could disrupt water, power, and rail services, possibly causing widespread chaos or even injuring and killing Americans, they said. 

While Russia is known for cyber attacks that cause real-world harm—for example, targeting U.S. political campaigns and Ukrainian power plants—China is viewed as far more risk-averse. It’s best known for cyber theft, of intellectual property or government information, such as the Office of Personnel Management hack uncovered in 2015. But Volt Typhoon, which Microsoft revealed last May, represents something far more threatening. 

At a meeting with reporters last week, a senior NSA official put the issue in starker terms. 

“They’re in places that they are not there for intelligence purposes. They are not there for financial gain. Those are two hallmarks of Chinese intrusions in other sets and other lanes,” the official said. 

China is still undertaking those activities, “but this is unique in that it’s prepositioning on critical infrastructure, on military networks, to be able to deliver effects at the time and place of their choosing so that they can disrupt our ability to support military activities or to distract us, to get us to focus on, you know, a domestic incident at a time when something’s flaring up in a different part of the world and they don’t want us facing the foreign aspects of that,” the official said.

FBI Director Christopher Wray underscored the seriousness to lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the CCP on Wednesday. 

“There has been far too little public focus on the fact that PRC hackers are targeting our critical infrastructure, our water treatment plants, our electrical grid, our oil and natural gas pipelines, our transportation systems, and the risk that poses to every American requires our attention. Now, China’s…