Idaho Is Officially Under Attack From Chinese Hackers

As if we don't have enough to worry about, the FBI issued a warning on Wednesday (1/31) that our entire infrastructure is at risk of being attacked by Chinese hackers.

"Volt Typhoon"

According to CNBC, FBI Director Christopher Wray announced at a House committee hearing that the FBI shut down a "major China-backed hacking group" that intended to compromise our cyber infrastructure.

According to the Department of Justice, the hackers known as "Volt Typhoon" targeted privately owned routers in small offices and personal home offices. The routers that the Chinese hackers compromised were Cisco and NetGear routers which are extremely common and popular, especially in the Treasure Valley.

The hackers who the feds say are backed by the People's Republic of China (PRC), targeted "critical infrastructure":

The Justice Department has disrupted a PRC-backed hacking group that attempted to target America’s critical infrastructure utilizing a botnet. The United States will continue to dismantle malicious cyber operations – including those sponsored by foreign governments – that undermine the security of the American people.

What's a "botnet"?

A botnet is "a network of computers infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners' knowledge, e.g., to send spam messages" according to a quick web search.

This is especially alarming to officials because they say Volt Typhoon's been able to "hide" China as they target US communications, energy, transportation, and even water sectors.

They're not stopping just at US infrastructure either...

With the upcoming election, the FBI says that they are on high alert and focused on preventing election interference from the Chinese.

According to CNBC, Taiwan reports that several China-backed disinformation campaigns aimed at influencing their recent presidential election - something that could very well be a possibility in the US if we're not staying vigilant.

“We should absolutely expect that foreign actors will attempt to influence and that they will interfere,” Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said at the hearing on Wednesday according to CNBC. “To be very clear, Americans should have confidence in the integrity of our election infrastructure because of the enormous amount of work that’s been done.”

If you've been noticing unusual activity in your home network or at your office, you might consider taking some extra measures to ensure your network is safe from Chinese hackers.

Here are five tips on how to keep your information and router safe from hackers.

Guard.io has other useful and in-depth tips for you to stay safe from cyber attacks that you can check out here.