Have two and a half hours to spare?
Perhaps you should watch this video from FBI director Christopher Wray warning the US Congress about the dangers posed by Chinese state-sponsored hackers rather than sitting down to watch” Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part One.”
Law enforcement organizations have disrupted a botnet run by the Volt Typhoon hacking group, as Wray explained to the House select committee on the Chinese Communist party.
The “vast majority” of affected routers are outdated NetGear and Cisco hardware that is thought to be past the point of “end of life” and is n’t getting security updates anymore.
If the routers were n’t patched, they could be drawn into Volt Typhoon’s so-called KV botnet. A court-approved US operation, however, removed the malware from the impacted routers and took precautions to stop reinfection.
Volt Typhoon, according to FBI Wray, is endangering home office routers and small businesses in order to conceal the source of upcoming Chinese-backed cyberattacks.
” In the event of war, Chinese hackers are targeting American civilian critical infrastructure, pre-placing themselves to harm American citizens and communities in the real world.” China was able to conceal itself while focusing on the water, energy, transportation, and communications sectors thanks to Volt Typhoon malware.
The attacks, according to committee chairman Mike Gallagher, are” the cyberspace equivalent of detonating bombs on American bridges, water treatment plants, and power plants.”
There is some truth to it, despite the fact that it is a headline-grabbing statement. In the past, we have witnessed nation-states launch cyberattacks against water systems and power grids. Such attacks might have a big impact if they are successful.
Tens of millions of Ukrainians were able to have their internet access blocked by Russia, for example, and the country’s power grid was disrupted in a separate cyberattack.
” These actions have no economic ramifications. Gallagher continued,” There is no intelligence-gathering rationale. Being prepared to destroy American infrastructure, which will unavoidably cause a large number of American casualties, is the only goal.
Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ( CISA ), Jen Easterly, spoke at the hearing as well.
To ensure that they can incite societal panic and chaos and to deter our ability to marshal a sufficient response, it is said that “in this world, an important crisis halfway across the globe could well endanger the lives of Americans here at home through the disruption of our pipelines, severing our telecommunications.
Maybe it would be less disturbing to watch Tom Cruise prattle around on a motorcycle while you snack on popcorn.