The Chinese government has declared Volt Typhoon to be not an actual hacking collective, but rather a swindling campaign conducted by the US government, with the help of the cybersecurity authorities from Five Eyes countries, as well as many other commercial cybersecurity entities.
It’s a full-blown conspiracy that targets US citizens while, at the same time, painting China as the big bad in cyberspace.
The accusations were published in a new paper from the nation’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center, National Engineering Laboratory for Computer Virus Prevention Technology, and infosec vendor 360 Digital Security Group. The paper, littered with grammar and spelling mistakes, is roughly 20 pages long, claims to show multiple evidence of the conspiracy.
“Misinformation campaign”
The US government’s motive for running the Volt Typhoon scam, the report claims, is to swindle more budget from the Congress.
“The ‘Volt Typhoon’ is a misinformation campaign that targets the U.S. Congress and taxpayers,” it says. “It was planned and conducted by U.S. intelligence agencies. The object of the campaign is to preserve U.S. intelligence agencies’ warrantless snooping powers on all people over the world including Americans via FISA Section 702, so that the U.S. government agencies could eliminate the 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 the purposes of foreign intelligence. So, ironically enough, China is also criticizing 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 Volt Typhoon was lurking on the networks of critical US infrastructure firms “for years.”