FBI director warns Chinese hackers are targeting US infrastructure

WASHINGTON — Chinese government hackers are busily targeting water treatment plants, the electrical grid, transportation systems and other critical infrastructure inside the United States, FBI Director Chris Wray told House lawmakers Wednesday in a fresh warning from Washington about Beijing’s global ambitions.

Underscoring the threat, the Justice Department and FBI announced just before the hearing that they had disrupted a botnet of hundreds of U.S.-based small office and home routers owned by private citizens and companies and hijacked by the Chinese state hackers to cover their tracks and hide their origin as they sowed the malware.

Speaking before the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Wray said there’s been “far too little public focus” on a cyber threat that affects “every American.”

“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 he said.

Jen Easterly, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm, voiced a similar sentiment at the hearing.

“This is a world where a major crisis halfway across the planet could well endanger the lives of Americans here at home through the disruption of our pipelines, the severing of our telecommunications, the pollution of our water facilities, the crippling of our transportation modes — all to ensure that they can incite societal panic and chaos and to deter our ability” to respond, she said.

The comments align with assessments from outside cybersecurity firms including Microsoft, which said in May that state-backed Chinese hackers had been targeting U.S. critical…