Newly installed FBI Cyber Division Head Brett Leatherman has urged the U.S. to remain on the lookout for ongoing Chinese cybersecurity threats amid likely cyberattacks from Iran following military strikes against its nuclear facilities last week, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
China will be looking to exploit the U.S.'s shifting cyber priorities to launch persistent and strategic intrusions, according to Leatherman, who emphasized the significantly "consequential" nature of Chinese attacks against the country's critical infrastructure networks. At least nine U.S. telecommunications firms were confirmed to have been compromised by the Salt Typhoon hacking operation, with Viasat and a leading Canadian telecommunications provider most recently added to the Chinese state-backed threat group's victim list. "It's really part of a long game by [China] to map our infrastructure, to steal our data, to erode our strategic edge from the inside out to take the data part of the Salt Typhoon breach, aggregate it with other data stolen from other prior breaches and build out a better intelligence picture of the United States," said Leatherman.
China will be looking to exploit the U.S.'s shifting cyber priorities to launch persistent and strategic intrusions, according to Leatherman, who emphasized the significantly "consequential" nature of Chinese attacks against the country's critical infrastructure networks. At least nine U.S. telecommunications firms were confirmed to have been compromised by the Salt Typhoon hacking operation, with Viasat and a leading Canadian telecommunications provider most recently added to the Chinese state-backed threat group's victim list. "It's really part of a long game by [China] to map our infrastructure, to steal our data, to erode our strategic edge from the inside out to take the data part of the Salt Typhoon breach, aggregate it with other data stolen from other prior breaches and build out a better intelligence picture of the United States," said Leatherman.
