The US has successfully dismantled a Chinese state-sponsored group known as the "Volt Typhoon," targeting key public infrastructure such as the power grid and pipelines. The FBI's director, Christopher Wray, claimed that the group hacked into hundreds of older office routers to access data on US assets. The Chinese government has not yet responded to the accusations, but it has previously denied allegations of state-sponsored cyber warfare against other countries. Wray told a US congressional committee that China was deliberately laying the groundwork to cripple critical US infrastructure systems in the event of a hostile conflict.
The group targeted a broad sweep of the country's critical infrastructure, including water treatment systems, the power grid, transportation systems, oil and gas pipelines, and telecommunication networks. Wray said the Volt Typhoon malware enabled China to hide pre-operational reconnaissance and network exploitation against critical infrastructure, showing the hackers were preparing to "wreak chaos and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities." Cyber security experts in the US have previously warned that China is targeting infrastructure to lay the potential groundwork for the disruption of communications in the event of a conflict.
The Select Committee on Competition Between the US and China has been criticised by Beijing, which denies all allegations of cybercrime. However, Wray outlined Beijing's resources dedicated to cyber warfare in detail and said China's hacking program was bigger than every other major nation combined.
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