12 May 2024

China's Volt Typhoon campaign is metastasizing

DAVID DIMOLFETTA

FBI Director Christopher Wray announced the court-authorized takedown at a high-profile January hearing, telling lawmakers that its cyber operatives disabled KV-botnet, a digital entity of chain-linked equipment, including cameras and routers, that was compromised and used to form a data transfer network for the group — known as Volt Typhoon — to quietly tunnel into critical infrastructure in preparation for what officials publicly say is U.S. military conflict with Beijijng.

Its operations were significantly slowed down, but the KV-botnet was just one of many staging grounds. Volt Typhoon, believed to be working on behalf of Chinese state authorities, is using multiple covert networks now, making it seemingly impossible to completely stop the entity in its tracks, officials told reporters at RSA Conference in San Francisco.

The news comes after a recent a diplomatic trip to China two weeks ago, where the State Department’s cyberspace and digital policy ambassador Nathaniel Fick and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Chinese officials in Shanghai and Beiijng that the Volt Typhoon activity has hit a boiling point, Fick told reporters in a separate briefing at the conference.

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