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FBI says Chinese hackers are inside US infrastructure to cause ‘devastating blow’ (www.independent.co.uk)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by MicroWave to c/news

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

China wants to target critical infrastructure like water facilities and energy grids, FBI director said

Chinese state-sponsored hackers have conducted widespread cyberattacks on critical American infrastructure in recent years, intending to give the country the ability to cause “a devastating blow” against the US, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“The fact is, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] targeting of our critical infrastructure is both broad and unrelenting,” he told a security conference in Nashville on Thursday, describing China’s hacking programme as growing in strength.

“It’s using that mass, those numbers, to give itself the ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing,” he added.

Last year, security analysts at Microsoft identified mysterious code linked to communications systems in Guam, the US territory in the Pacific with a massive strategic air base.

Officials believe the code was the work of Volt Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group.

top 27 comments

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[–] Chainweasel 88 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'll never understand how our infrastructure isn't on a completely separate air gapped network.
Obviously they need to share data in house, but the government absolutely has the resources to run their own separate intranet that's not at all connected to the global internet, and yet they just plug their shit into consumer lines and hope their security is up to snuff.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Sometimes an airgap isn't enough (Stuxnet is a good example), but realistically cybersecurity is an afterthought unfortunately. Simply go onto Shodan and lookup Schneider or Allen-Bradley to see how many of these controllers are accessible directly from the internet

[–] Wooki 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Dont understate the effectiveness of offline networks.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Nah man, this is my game, air gap systems aren't really a thing for anything non-military anymore. Companies want a real-time view into their production for making business decisions.

There are ways to secure your control systems network properly without a full airgap with proper boundary controls between the various layers of your Purdue model as well as fully separate Active Directories just to make a start.

Its actually an entire independent cybersecurity specialisation for OT networks. For anyone who is interested I would recommend Hacking Exposed Industrial Control Systems: ICS and SCADA Security Secrets & Solutions by Clint Bodungen its a fantastic read and very easy to follow.

Now the concept of air gapping still exists in this architecture, its designed to be able to "Island" which is where you break the connection between your corporate and OT networks when an incident has occurred on the corporate side essentially creating an airgap.

[–] Wooki 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Essentially vs actually is conflation. Zero trust and segmentation is marketing. If its connected its vulnerable. value just determines when. if you really are in the industry the big vulnerability everyone has been talking about last week is evidence enough to the fact.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Oh yea poor old Palo Alto Networks is having a rough time at the moment. But a mature OT network has implemented defence in depth correctly and have a plan in place for incidents such as this one should they occur. I know a few sites who have had to island until they were able to put vulnerability mitigation in place, the good thing is that they could do this without disrupting their OT operations significantly. What you're saying is correct, if its connected its only a matter of when not if, but you design your system with this in mind.

At the end of the day corporations are going to want business data from your site, and we need to design around that. To fight it and just air gap is going to result in you getting side stepped and your system being even more vulnerable. It's going to happen either way so we need to make sure we have the plans in place to implement it as safely as possible.

[–] sylver_dragon 14 points 6 months ago

They don't even need to run a separate network. The NSA has long since figured out a way to move secure data over an insecure network. The problem is that most of the US's infrastructure is run by "for profit" companies. And since they are neither required, not is it profitable, to have robust security, they don't. Instead, they do the bare minimum to be compliant with whatever frameworks they are required to. And since basically every one of those compliance frameworks is all about having the right documentation and never actually audit systems directly, their actual security is shit.
If you want companies to start taking security seriously, then we need GDPR style fines when companies get breached and are found to be running operating system and software which is years out of date. Compliance frameworks also need to get into the nitty-gritty details of OS and software configuration and not just "have a baseline".

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I mean a lot of government shit is still on the old cobol code.

[–] FlyingSquid 29 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You can't upgrade when congress won't allocate money for your department to do so. Or raise the taxes necessary to raise that money.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Fuck raising taxes (unless it's only rich fucks and corporations then I'm OK with it) they can take 1% of that infinite money stream they have running for the defense budget. We don't $1 trillion for the military

[–] FlyingSquid 15 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm not sure why you assumed I meant anyone other than the rich and corporations on the Lemmy news community.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I didn't assume anything. You didn't specify so I wanted to specify it to make it known. High five :)

[–] Promethiel 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I see this happen to you a lot; don't forget the safest place to make and attack straw-men is usually the place with the least valid targets. You're a perpetual victim of missed nuance and that is the cost of discourse nowadays. I'd say don't let the bastards grind you down but there's not even that many here just people assuming you're the bastard.

[–] FlyingSquid 4 points 6 months ago

Thanks. I'm not worried about it. Most of the time they just confuse me.

[–] SupraMario 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

We don't even need to increase taxes at all, the budget they have is completely insane, it's that lie that keeps getting us to the "we don't have the money so we need to raise taxes". We have it, we just have children who don't know how to manage it spending it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's insane that we are approaching the one trillion a year for the defense budget. I can only imagine the amount of fraud and money stealing that goes into that shit.

[–] SupraMario 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yep, check out how much we spend on healthcare. It's nearly double of what other countries spend per person via single payer. That's how fucked the system is. We literally can, right this very second, implement single payer and have the funds for it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Where does the Healthcare money go? Are you like talking medicaid and Medicare?

[–] SupraMario 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-life-expectancy-compare-countries/

Mostly costs from insurance and private industry charging prices that are just insane.

Also don't cry when you see the life expectancy vs per capita cost.... Germany is #2 cost wise and we're still 4k over what they spend on their people. We literally spend so much and get so little in return.

On a per person basis, U.S. health spending is nearly double that of similarly large and wealthy nations. In 2022, the U.S. spent over $4,000 more per capita on healthcare than the next highest spending country. Meanwhile, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy among peer countries. 

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

It's so fucked up how private companies triple and quadruple their fees once they see the word "government". Shit should be heavily regulated, but we just have a truly shitty and corrupt government.

[–] mansfield 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Here is a link to the Independent story above without the tracker bullshit.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/china-hackers-fbi-wray-infrastructure-b2531182.html

[–] MicroWave 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Huh? That’s the exact same link as the post’s.

[–] mansfield 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No, it is not.

Last year, security analysts at Microsoft identified mysterious code linked to communications systems in Guam, the US territory in the Pacific with a massive strategic air base.

is currently pointing to:

hxxps://clicks[.]trx-hub[.]com/xid/esimedia_t58ukgmjkf95_theindependent?q=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.redirectingat.com%2F%3Fid%3D44681X1458326%26url%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2023%252F07%252F29%252Fus%252Fpolitics%252Fchina-malware-us-military-bases-taiwan.html%253Fsmid%253Durl-share%26sref%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fchina-hackers-fbi-wray-infrastructure-b2531182.html&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fchina-hackers-fbi-wray-infrastructure-b2531182.html&article_id=2531182&author=Josh+Marcus&tag=FBI%2CHackers%2Cinfrastructure%2CChristopher+Wray%2CMicrosoft&section=World&category=Americas&sub_category=&updated_time=2024-04-18T23%3A19%3A22.000Z&utm_campaign=news-body&utm_term=B-1&utm_content=&utm_medium=mobile&ref=ground.news&utm_source=ground.news&fbclid=&gclid=

[–] MicroWave 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Oh you mean the post summary. Yeah, that's the article's verbatim linked URL. Check the article's source and see for yourself.

In any case, thanks for pointing that out. I've stripped the tracker link and updated the post summary portion.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

On the 225 in Denver Wednesday night, northbound, there was an enormous section of the road, at least five miles, where two lanes were closed. No workers working. None of the road was torn up. Just comes closing all but one lane for miles.

Traffic was at a crawl. I had passengers in my car and we crept along for maybe 15 minutes through this weird phantom “work zone”.

The weirdest part is that the google maps traffic data showed the whole stretch of road as solid green, despite the fact we were going like 5-10 mph with frequent stoppage in a 75 mph zone.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Covert Chinese Cones Cause Colorado Car Crawl!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Fuckin spectacular