Chinese government-linked hackers were using hundreds of thousands of internet routers and other devices in a vast secret network. Without your knowledge, your toaster, fridge or thermostat could be a threat to critical U.S. infrastructure, located anywhere in the world.
Chinese hackers hindered
For now, Chinese hackers won’t be able to use their “massive web of hacked devices” to conduct “targeted cyberattacks on U.S. companies or government agencies.” That doesn’t mean the threat is over.
“The FBI,” bureau Director Christopher Wray informs, “has used a court order” to seize control of the clandestine botnet. He knows it’s only a temporary patch. “It is just one round in a much longer fight,” Wray lamented, in a speech at the Aspen Cyber Summit.
The event was held in Washington, DC. on Wednesday, September 18. “The Chinese government is going to continue to target your organizations and our critical infrastructure,” the director warns. He waved around a copy of the latest advisory on the subject put out by the “Five Eyes” club of spooks.
The “English-speaking alliance that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom” remains anxious about the threat.
As of this June, Wray relates, the Chinese botnet “included over 260,000 hacked devices from all over the world, from North and South America to Australia.” Things you would never expect to be hacked for nefarious purposes like webcams, DVRs and routers.
Roughly half of them “were located in the U.S.” because we have such lax security in our personal devices. Most people continue using the manufacturer default network settings for years.
China denies everything
Unsurprisingly, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington took offense at the allegations in the intelligence bulletin. They call the American charges “groundless,” while issuing accusations of their own that we’re “conducting cyberattacks” against them. We probably are.
Everyone knows, including CNN, that “it’s the latest tit-for-tat in the often-tense relations between U.S. and China in cyberspace.”
The feds have been watching another group of the Pooh Bear’s hackers. That one “has been lurking in U.S. transportation and communication networks, waiting to use that access to disrupt any U.S. response to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”
Which could happen any moment now. That unit is getting ready to “wreak havoc and cause real-world harm” to the U.S., Wray testified before Congress back in January.
The botnet which the FBI targeted on Wednesday was “an active menace” but isn’t now. Recently the Chinese network caused “an all-hands-on deck cybersecurity incident” for one unnamed California-based organization, causing “significant financial loss,” Wray observed. The main reason the feds swooped in now to take down the equipment “was more about what the botnet could have done than what it did.”
Wray explains that “the army of zombie computers has been a quiet and looming threat to U.S. government networks for many months.” They tipped their hand last December. The Chinese were all set to do nasty things to our power, water, phones and sewers and just waiting for the right moment to do it.
