Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into US critical infrastructure and are waiting “for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow”, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, has warned. An ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has successfully gained access to numerous American companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, with 23 pipeline operators targeted, Wray said in a speech at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday. China is developing the “ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time…
Tag: Hacking
China will use AI to disrupt elections in the US, South Korea and India, Microsoft warns
China will attempt to disrupt elections in the US, South Korea and India this year with artificial intelligence-generated content after making a dry run with the presidential poll in Taiwan, Microsoft has warned. The US tech firm said it expected Chinese state-backed cyber groups to target high-profile elections in 2024, with North Korea also involved, according to a report by the company’s threat intelligence team published on Friday. “As populations in India, South Korea and the United States head to the polls, we are likely to see Chinese cyber and…
US reprimands Microsoft for security failures that allowed Chinese hack
In a scathing indictment of Microsoft corporate security and transparency, a Biden administration-appointed review board issued a report Tuesday saying “a cascade of errors” by the tech giant let state-backed Chinese cyber operators break into email accounts of senior US officials including commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo. The Cyber Safety Review Board, created in 2021 by executive order, describes shoddy cybersecurity practices, a lax corporate culture and a lack of sincerity about the company’s knowledge of the targeted breach, which affected multiple US agencies that deal with China. It concluded that…
Western governments struggle to coordinate response to Chinese hacking
With the announcement that the UK government would be imposing sanctions on two individuals and one entity accused of targeting – without success – UK parliamentarians in cyber-attacks in 2021, the phrase “tip of the iceberg” comes to mind. But that would underestimate the iceberg. James Cleverly, the home secretary, said the sanctions were a sign that “targeting our elected representatives and electoral processes will never go unchallenged”. But some experts saw it as a sign that the UK had been pushed into a corner by a decision in Washington…
Why didn’t New Zealand impose sanctions on China?
Politicians, journalists and critics of Beijing were among those targeted by cyber-attacks run by groups backed by China, western intelligence services said this week. The separate cyber-attacks hit the US, UK and New Zealand – all members of the Five Eyes alliance. The network of five countries, which also includes Canada and Australia, share security related intelligence. While Beijing rejected claims of its involvement, the US and UK chose to take further steps against those entities they said were involved, but New Zealand took a different tack. How did the…
Foreign Office summons senior Chinese diplomat over ‘malicious cyber activity’
Ministers summoned a senior Chinese diplomat to the Foreign Office on Tuesday after accusing Beijing-backed hackers of a cyber-attack on the British elections watchdog and a surveillance operation on politicians. The department called in China’s chargé d’affaires and told him the UK would not tolerate “threatening” cyber-attacks. An FCDO spokesperson said the ministry had “set out the government’s unequivocal condemnation of Chinese state-affiliated organisations and individuals undertaking malicious cyber activity against UK democratic institutions and parliamentarians”. “The UK government would not tolerate such threatening activity, and would continue to take…
Tuesday briefing: Why the US and UK are going public with warnings about Chinese hacking
Good morning. You’re probably not an MP or peer on the Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), so that part of yesterday’s cyber-attack revelations needn’t concern you excessively. If you are among the 40 million UK voters included on a register held by the Electoral Commission, though, I have bad news: the Chinese government has your personal details. Yesterday afternoon, deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden laid out sanctions in response to the attacks – in the case of the Electoral Commission hack, more than three years after it happened. In co-ordinated…
Does China spy on Britain? Of course. But we have more important things to discuss with them | Simon Jenkins
Once upon a time Britain would have sent a gunboat up the Yangtze River. That would teach those Chinese a lesson. To hear some MPs talk about Beijing’s espionage activities, you would think gunboats were already on their way. Of course, it is malicious and hurtful for a foreign state patently to hack into Britain’s Electoral Commission and target senior parliamentarians – as the government on Monday claimed China did in 2021. It is equally malicious to fabricate MPs’ emails and use a Commons researcher as an informant. No less…
China cyber-attacks explained: who is behind the hacking operation against the US and UK?
The US and UK have imposed sanctions on individuals and groups that they say targeted politicians, journalists and critics of Beijing in an extensive cyber espionage campaign – allegedly operated by an arm of China’s ministry of state security. The scale of the operation was revealed on Monday, although some of the attacks have been previously reported on. On Tuesday, New Zealand blamed “state-sponsored” Chinese hackers for a 2021 cyber-attack that infiltrated sensitive government computer systems. Who is behind the cyber-attacks? Both the UK and US point the finger at…
New Zealand parliament targeted in China-backed hack in 2021, spy agency says
A group backed by the Chinese state targeted New Zealand government services in a cyber-attack in 2021, New Zealand’s intelligence agency has said. The government and intelligence agency – the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) – confirmed the breach on Tuesday after the UK and the US accused China of similar attacks. “This is the first time we have attributed state-sponsored malicious cyber activity to the People’s Republic of China, for intrusion into New Zealand government systems,” said the GCSB director, Andrew Clark. In August 2021, the GCSB’s cybersecurity centre…