FBI Director Christopher Wray announced on Wednesday that American law enforcement has taken down a second significant Chinese hacking gang known as “Flax Typhoon” and taken thousands of hacked devices out of their hands.
At a cybersecurity conference in Washington, Wray said that the Integrity Technology Group, a Chinese business that operated under the guise of an IT company but actually “collected intelligence and performed reconnaissance for Chinese government security agencies,” was behind Flax Typhoon.
In a separate alert released on Wednesday, cyber officials from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand indicated that the Integrity Technology Group was responsible for the hostile cyber operation and claimed that the group had infiltrated over 250,000 devices worldwide as of June.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington claimed that Beijing had taken action against “all forms of cyberattacks.” It accused American authorities of “Hastily drawing a judgment and leveling baseless charges against China” in a statement.
Western officials have been increasingly concerned about a hacking gang known as “Volt Typhoon” since it was initially discovered to be a cyber sabotage outfit aiming to take control of vital U.S. infrastructure last year.
While Beijing claims it is a ransomware gang, U.S. authorities claim it is a group supported by China.
Operation Flax Typhoon was carried out last week, according to Wray, “as part of our ongoing efforts to take China’s botnets offline.” He said Flax Typhoon, like Volt Typhoon, was aimed against government agencies, businesses, media outlets, educational institutions, and vital infrastructure.
According to Wray, Flax Typhoon used “a botnet,” or a network of compromised devices, to channel their harmful communications to conceal their activities. In this case, the devices were digital storage units and webcams.
He said that the hackers launched a cyberattack in response to an attempt by the FBI to seize control of the botnet’s infrastructure, and then they withdrew from the conflict. Wray warned that the FBI’s conflict with China’s hackers would not end.
