The FBI shut down the activities of a Chinese hacker group
The director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray, said that the US has stopped the activities of a large Chinese hacker group called “Flax Typhoon”. He made this statement on Wednesday at a conference on cyber security in Washington, Reuters reports. According to the director, law enforcement agencies managed to snatch thousands of devices from the hacker group’s network.
Ray noted that the “Flax Typhoon” group was managed by the Chinese company Integrity Technology Group, which positioned itself as an IT firm, but in fact collected intelligence and carried out activities in the interests of the Chinese special services. According to him, the attacks of the group were aimed at critical infrastructure, corporations, media organizations, universities and government offices of the USA.
“Flax Typhoon” used a so-called “botnet” — a network of hacked cameras and digital data storage devices — to carry out its attacks, Ray explained. He added that before specialists could take control of the botnet’s infrastructure, hackers managed to carry out a cyberattack.
The Chinese authorities stated that “Flax Typhoon” is a criminal group engaged in extortion.
Christopher Ray emphasized that the US will continue the fight in this direction, noting that the operation against the “Flax Typhoon” was “only one round in a much longer fight.”
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