The Federal Bureau of Investigation and partners disrupted a major Chinese botnet and freed thousands of impacted devices from its clutches, FBI Director Christopher Wray announced on Wednesday. The botnet, which was operated by a Chinese government-sponsored hacker group known as Flax Typhoon, targeted internet-connected devices such as storage devices, cameras, and video recorders to compromise victims’ systems and steal their confidential data, Wray said during a keynote at the 2024 Aspen Cyber Summit in Washington, D.C.

“Ultimately, as part of this operation, we were able to identify thousands of infected devices, and, then, with court authorization, issued commands to remove the malware from them, prying them from China’s grip. “Approximately half of the devices under the botnet’s control were based in the United States,” he noted. The hacker group’s targets included organizations in the public and private sectors, as well as academia and the media. Wray also revealed the hacker group’s true identity t
o be an information security company known as the Integrity Technology Group.

“But their chairman has publicly admitted that for years his company has collected intelligence and performed reconnaissance for Chinese government security agencies,” he went on. Wray called the cyber disruption a success but cautioned that the effort was “just one round in a much longer fight.” “The Chinese government is going to continue to target your organizations and our critical infrastructure-either by their own hand or concealed through their proxies.

“And we’ll continue to work with our partners to identify their malicious activity, disrupt their hacking campaigns, and bring them to light,” he added.

Source: Kuwait News Agency