International alarm due to massive cyber attacks from China. The intelligence services of Spain, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Swedenin addition to the five countries of the Five Eyes alliance (USA, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) have issued a joint notice about the use by Chinese hackers of smart refrigerators present in homes to attack Western infrastructure.
In that sense, the United Kingdom’s National Cybersecurity Center has expressed that “the use of covert networks of compromised devices to facilitate malicious cyber activity is not new, but linked to China now They are using them strategically and on a large scale.
The aforementioned intelligence services have warned that the Asian country is taking advantage of vulnerabilities in terms of cybersecurity of both home internet routers as of the devices with basic internet connectivity to compromise public services such as power plants and communications networks.
These types of cyber attacks are becoming possible because neither individuals nor companies usually update software regularly of the devices that are connected (and therefore exposed) to the internet.
Volt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon and Violet Typhoon: the cyber units behind the attacks
As reported citing Western intelligence agencies, behind these attacks would be three of the most powerful Chinese cyber units: Volt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon and Violet Typhoon. All of them are groups supported by the Chinese state that are dedicated to cyberespionage and sabotage of critical Western infrastructure.
In this regard, the aforementioned media outlet explains that “Volt Typhoon y Flax Typhoonboth linked to the People’s Liberation Army, have been attacking American communications networks”. For its part, “Flax Typhoon focuses mainly on hacking into Taiwanese networks and US military systems related to Taiwan.”
