March 19, 2024 at 04:25PM
U.S. and partner cybersecurity agencies issued warnings against the Chinese hacking group, Volt Typhoon, targeting critical infrastructure. They provided defense tips and urged infrastructure leaders to empower their cybersecurity teams. The group has breached U.S. critical infrastructure, posing risks of disruption during military conflicts. Additionally, FBI disrupted the group’s botnet.
Based on the meeting notes, the key takeaways are as follows:
1. CISA, the NSA, the FBI, and other U.S. and international agencies have issued warnings to critical infrastructure leaders about the Chinese hacking group known as Volt Typhoon. There are concerns that the group may seek to exploit access to Operational Technology (OT) assets within networks to disrupt critical infrastructure, especially during military conflicts or geopolitical tensions.
2. CISA and partner U.S. government agencies have advised critical infrastructure leaders to empower their cybersecurity teams to make informed resourcing decisions, secure their supply chain, and ensure that performance management outcomes align with their organization’s cyber goals.
3. The joint guidance emphasized the importance of robust logging for detecting and mitigating living off the land, and urged organizations to ensure that relevant logs revealing commands used by Volt Typhoon actors are maintained or identify the resources needed to effectively detect compromise.
4. Volt Typhoon, also known as Bronze Silhouette, has been targeting and breaching U.S. critical infrastructure organizations since at least mid-2021. The group employed a botnet of hundreds of small office/home offices (SOHO) across the U.S. called KV-botnet to hide their malicious activity and evade detection.
5. The FBI successfully disrupted the group’s KV-botnet in December, and CISA and the FBI urged SOHO router manufacturers to secure their devices against Volt Typhoon attacks by using secure configuration defaults and eliminating web management interface flaws during development.
These takeaways highlight the ongoing efforts to address the threats posed by the Volt Typhoon hacking group to critical infrastructure and the collaborative actions being taken by various agencies and organizations to defend against such cyber threats.