Tag Archive for: chinese

All about Volt Typhoon, the Chinese hacking group, ET Telecom

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China is developing the “ability to physically wreak havoc” on US critical infrastructure and its hackers are waiting “for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow”, FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday.

The comments were in relation to a Chinese government-linked hacking campaign dubbed Volt Typhoon. The campaign was disclosed by the US and its key allies in May 2023, when analysts at Microsoft found it had targeted everything from US telecommunication networks to transportation hubs.

On Thursday, Wray said Volt Typhoon had successfully gained access to American targets across the telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors.

Here is what is known about Volt Typhoon and its potential threat:

‘Future crises’

Nearly every country in the world uses hackers to gather intelligence. Major powers like the United States and Russia have large stables of such groups – many of which have been given colourful nicknames by cybersecurity experts, such as “Equation Group” or “Fancy Bear.”

Experts begin to worry when such groups turn their attention from intelligence gathering to digital sabotage. So when Microsoft Corp said in a blog post in May last year that Volt Typhoon was “pursuing development of capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises,” it immediately brought to mind escalating tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan.

Any conflict between those two countries would almost certainly involve cyberattacks across the Pacific.

Taiwan botnet

Does this mean a group of destructive hackers is preparing to sabotage US infrastructure in the event of a conflict over Taiwan?

Microsoft qualified its assessment last year as “moderate confidence,” intelligence jargon that typically means a theory is plausible and credibly sourced but has yet to be fully corroborated. Different researchers have identified various aspects of the group.

It is now clear that Volt Typhoon has functioned by taking control of swathes of vulnerable digital devices around the world – such as routers, modems, and even internet-connected…

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FBI’s Chris Wray warns Chinese hackers preparing to attack US infrastructure ‘to induce panic’

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FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Thursday that a hacking group linked to the Chinese government is waiting for the right moment to “deal a devastating blow” to U.S. critical infrastructure.

Wray delivered a keynote speech at the Vanderbilt Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats in Nashville, and told national security and intelligence experts that the risks posed by the government of China to U.S. national and economic security are “upon us now.”

The director said a recent bureau investigation found that the Chinese government had gained illicit access to networks within America’s “critical telecommunications, energy, water, and other infrastructure sectors.”

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] has made it clear that it considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage, and that its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic and break America’s will to resist,” Wray said — the FBI explained “these vital sectors—everything from water treatment facilities and energy grids to transportation and information technology—form the backbone of our society.”

“The fact is, the PRC’s targeting of our critical infrastructure is both broad and unrelenting,” he added. “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,”

Wray said CCP-sponsored cyber actors “prepositioned” themselves to potentially mount cyber offenses against American energy companies in 2011—targeting 23 different pipeline operators, with Wray saying this helps understand current motivations.

“When one victim company set up a honeypot—essentially, a trap designed to look like a legitimate part of a computer network with decoy documents—it took the hackers all of 15 minutes to steal data related to the control and monitoring systems, while ignoring financial and business-related information, which suggests their goals were even more sinister than stealing a leg up economically,” he said.

The CCP also targeted critical infrastructure organizations through more…

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What is Volt Typhoon, the Chinese hacking group the FBI warns could deal a ‘devastating blow’?

/in


China is developing the “ability to physically wreak havoc” on US critical infrastructure and its hackers are waiting “for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow”, FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday.
The comments were in relation to a Chinese government-linked hacking campaign dubbed Volt Typhoon. The campaign was disclosed by the US and its key allies in May 2023, when analysts at Microsoft found it had targeted everything from US telecommunication networks to transportation hubs.
On Thursday, Wray said Volt Typhoon had successfully gained access to American targets across the telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors.
Here is what is known about Volt Typhoon and its potential threat:
‘Future crises’
Nearly every country in the world uses hackers to gather intelligence. Major powers like the United States and Russia have large stables of such groups – many of which have been given colourful nicknames by cybersecurity experts, such as “Equation Group” or “Fancy Bear.”
Experts begin to worry when such groups turn their attention from intelligence gathering to digital sabotage. So when Microsoft Corp said in a blog post in May last year that Volt Typhoon was “pursuing development of capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises,” it immediately brought to mind escalating tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan.
Any conflict between those two countries would almost certainly involve cyberattacks across the Pacific.
Taiwan botnet
Does this mean a group of destructive hackers is preparing to sabotage US infrastructure in the event of a conflict over Taiwan?
Microsoft qualified its assessment last year as “moderate confidence,” intelligence jargon that typically means a theory is plausible and credibly sourced but has yet to be fully corroborated. Different researchers have identified various aspects of the group.
It is now clear that Volt Typhoon has functioned by taking control of swathes of vulnerable digital devices around the world – such as routers, modems, and even internet-connected security cameras – to hide later, downstream attacks…

Source…

Scientists install encryption shield to protect advanced Chinese quantum computer from attack

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The new methods are to replace the conventional public-key cryptography system, which could be vulnerable in the face of quantum computers with powerful computing capabilities.

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China denies accusations of state-sponsored hacking from US, UK and New Zealand

China denies accusations of state-sponsored hacking from US, UK and New Zealand

The report quoted Dou Menghan, deputy director of the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Centre, as saying the “anti-quantum attack shield” was developed and used for the first time by Origin Quantum, the developer of the computer named after the Monkey King of Chinese mythology.

“This shows that China’s home-grown superconducting quantum computer can play both offence and defence in the field of quantum computing,” he said.

“This is also an important exploration of the application of new data security technologies in China.”

Origin launched its first superconducting quantum computer in 2020. The next year, the company delivered the 24-qubit Wuyuan second-generation machine – the country’s first practical quantum computer – making China the third country capable of delivering a complete quantum computing system after Canada and the United States.

The third-generation Wukong is powered by a 72-qubit home-grown superconducting quantum chip, also known as the Wukong chip.

In January, the superfast computer opened remote access to the world, attracting global users from countries such as the US, Bulgaria, Singapore, Japan, Russia and Canada to perform quantum computing tasks.

In traditional computing, a bit is the basic unit of information that represents either zero or one. A quantum bit, or qubit, takes it a step further by being able to represent zero, one, or both simultaneously.

Lawmaker urges China to safeguard tech production chain for a quantum edge

Because quantum computers can simultaneously represent multiple possibilities, they hold theoretical potential for significantly faster and more powerful computation compared to the everyday computers we use now.

But the subatomic particles central to this technology are fragile, short-lived and prone to errors if exposed to minor disturbances from the surroundings. Most…

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