A joint statement released on Wednesday by American and allied intelligence agencies revealed that a sophisticated Chinese hacker group has been targeting crucial US infrastructure for approximately five years.
The United States National Security Agency, along with the US cyber watchdog CISA, the FBI, and the Transportation Security Administration, have announced that a group called Volt Typhoon has covertly infiltrated the networks of various transportation organizations such as aviation, rail, mass transit, highway, maritime, pipeline, water, and sewage.
The statement did not name any of the organizations, but it stated that American intelligence officials had detected the hackers “maintaining access and footholds within certain victim IT systems for a minimum of five years.”
The statement, which was co-signed by the respective cybersecurity agencies of Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, is the latest in a series of warnings from US officials about Volt Typhoon, a group that has drawn particular alarm because it appears geared toward sabotage rather than espionage.
The prevalence of the cyber attacks has resulted in a succession of discussions between the White House and the private technology sector, including various telecommunications and cloud computing companies, during which the US government requested aid in monitoring the actions.
A high-ranking official from CISA, Eric Goldstein, expressed significant worry about the dangerous cyber actions carried out by China’s sponsored group known as Volt Typhoon. He mentioned this before the official statement was released, emphasizing that the victims targeted by this group have no valuable information for espionage purposes.
Source: theguardian.com
