China claims cyber attacks on Volt Typhoon were carried out by US agents

By James On Jul 19, 2024

The Chinese government has stated that Volt Typhoon is not a hacking collective, but a scam campaign carried out by the US government, with the help of the cybersecurity authorities of Five Eyes countries and many other commercial cybersecurity organizations.

It is an outright conspiracy targeting American citizens while simultaneously portraying China as the big bad in cyberspace.

The allegations were published in a new paper from the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center, National Engineering Laboratory for Computer Virus Prevention Technology and infosec vendor 360 Digital Security Group. The document, riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, is about 20 pages long and claims to show multiple pieces of evidence of the conspiracy.

“Disinformation campaign”

According to the report, the US government’s motive for committing the Volt Typhoon fraud was to extort more funding from Congress.

“The ‘Volt Typhoon’ is a disinformation campaign targeting the U.S. Congress and taxpayers,” it reads. “It was planned and executed by U.S. intelligence agencies. The goal of the campaign is to preserve the warrantless snooping powers of U.S. intelligence agencies on all people worldwide, including Americans, through FISA Section 702, so that U.S. government agencies can eliminate foreign competitors and defend the cyber hegemony and long-term interests of monopolies.”

FISA Section 702 is a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. It allows the U.S. government to collect and analyze communications of foreign individuals outside the United States for foreign intelligence purposes. Ironically, China has also criticized the United States for its surveillance practices.

Volt Typhoon is a cyber-espionage group that has been linked to the Chinese government. The group is known for its sophisticated and stealthy cyber operations, primarily targeting critical infrastructure in the United States. In early February 2024, an advisory published by CISA, the NSA, the FBI, and Five Eyes agencies claimed that Volt Typhoon had been lurking on the networks of critical U.S. infrastructure companies for “years.”