FBI Director Warns Chinese Hackers Aim To 'Wreak Havoc' On US Critical Infrastructure

'China's hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities, if or when China decides the time has come to strike,' said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a prepared testimony before the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. NBC News reports: Wray also argued that 'there has been far too little public focus' that Chinese hackers are targeting critical infrastructure in the U.S. such as water treatment plants, electrical grids, oil and natural gas pipelines, and transportation systems, according to the prepared remarks. 'And the risk that poses to every American requires our attention -- now,' his prepared testimony said.

As Wray testified, the Justice Department and FBI announced they had disabled a Chinese hacking operation that had infected hundreds of small office and home routers with botnet malware that targeted critical infrastructure. The DOJ said the hackers, known to the private sector as 'Volt Typhoon,' used privately owned small routers that were infected with 'KV botnet' malware to conceal further Chinese hacking activities against U.S. and foreign victims. Wray addressed the malware in his testimony, emphasizing that it targets critical infrastructure in the U.S.

At Wednesday's hearing, the director of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, testified that Americans should expect efforts by China to wage influence campaigns online relating to the 2024 election. However, Easterly added that she was confident that voting systems and other election infrastructure are well-defended. 'To be very clear, Americans should have confidence in the integrity of our election infrastructure because of the enormous amount of work that's been done by state and local election officials, by the federal government, by vendors, by the private sector since 2016,' Easterly said in her testimony.

Wray emphasized in the remarks that the 'cyber onslaught' of Chinese hackers 'goes way beyond prepositioning for future conflict,' saying in the prepared remarks that every day the hackers are 'actively attacking' U.S. economic security, engaging in 'wholesale theft of our innovation, and our personal and corporate data.' 'And they don't just hit our security and economy. They target our freedoms, reaching inside our borders, across America, to silence, coerce, and threaten our citizens and residents,' the excerpts said.

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