FBI director warns of threat from Chinese hacking group

Christopher Wray, the FBI Director, recently revealed that the bureau has disrupted a Chinese hacking group known as "Flax Typhoon." In a statement made at the Aspen Cyber Summit in Washington, Wray described the recovery of thousands of compromised devices as "just one round in a much longer fight." The team behind Flax Typhoon was allegedly run by a Chinese company, Integrity Technology Group, which, while posing as an IT firm, was reportedly collecting intelligence and conducting reconnaissance for Chinese government security agencies.

Flax Typhoon's Operations and Impact

The FBI Director further elaborated on the methods employed by Flax Typhoon, revealing that the hackers had routed malicious traffic through a network of hijacked devices, commonly referred to as a "botnet." Among the compromised devices were security cameras and digital storage systems typically found in both large and small organizations, with approximately half of these devices located in the United States.

This announcement comes on the heels of a similar disruption of another Chinese hacking group, "Volt Typhoon." Wray noted that Flax Typhoon operates in a manner akin to Volt Typhoon, which has been a persistent concern since it was first identified last year. The Volt Typhoon group notably embedded itself within several American critical infrastructure companies, including those in telecommunications, energy, and water sectors. The persistent threat posed by these hacking groups has been intertwined with the ongoing tensions between the U.S. and China, particularly concerning Taiwan. Security experts from Microsoft and Google have previously linked the Volt Typhoon hackers to China, and this connection was reiterated by Wray.