What is the Volt Typhoon? The alleged hacking group from China

Hackers are used in almost all countries of the world to collect intelligence information. The United States and Russia make use of intelligence groups, like the Fancy Bear and Equation Group.

Recently, on Wednesday, Microsoft Corp said that Volt Typhon was “pursuing the development of capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises.” This statement immediately rose concern regarding China and US tensions over Taiwan. Conflicts between China and US can lead to cyberattacks across the Pacifics.

What exactly is the Volt Typhoon?

The Volt Typhoon is actually an alleged hacking group. It is believed that the group is backed by China. It is said that the Volt Typhoon holds the abilities of intelligence collection as well as digital sabotage.

The question is whether the Volt Typhoon is actually a serious threat to American infrastructure, or is it just a new digital spies group.

The Typhoon Group and the possible threats

Volt Typhoon is seen as a major threat to the American infrastructure. The possible threats of the group are:

The threat of future crisis

Almost all countries of the world make use of hackers to gain intelligence. However, experts worry that tensions between China and the United States may lead to cyberattacks across the Pacific in the future.

The threat of Espionage

Experts worry about espionage. Volt Typhoon is seen by experts as a team of hackers all set to sabotage the United States' infrastructure in the course of tensions over Taiwan.

Volt Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored actor, uses living-off-the-land (LotL) and hands-on-keyboard TTPs to evade detection and persist in an espionage campaign targeting critical infrastructure organizations in Guam and the rest of the United States. https://t.co/FZxjfiA0Hw

— Microsoft Threat Intelligence (@MsftSecIntel) May 24, 2023

The assessment of Microsoft is qualified as "moderate confidence", which means that a theory is credibly sourced and reasonable, but has yet to be completely corroborated. There are many researchers who have identified and interpreted the various aspects of the group, however, there are not many who consider any evidence of sabotage devising.

The Volt Typhoon, till now seems to be aimed at sneaking data from organizations holding information relating to the U.S. government or military, as stated by Marc Burnard, Secureworks.

The Secureworks calls Volt Typhoon the "Bronze Silhouette", and Marc Burnard says that it has been made to use mainly for espionage purposes.

Volt Typhoon can prove to be a furtive storm

Almost all cyber spies attempt to shield their tracks, Microsoft and other experts suggest that Volt Typhoon was a quiet operator that concealed its traffic by means of routing it via hacked network equipment such as home routers. These prove to be well-planned erased evidence of encroachment from the logs of the victim.

China, on the other hand, incessantly denies hacking in the matter of the Volt Typhoon. However, the documentation of cyberespionage campaigns in Beijing has been getting ready for no less than twenty years. In the last 10 years, spying has become a strong focus as researchers from the West have tied breaches to particular units in the People's Liberation Army. United States law enforcement has charged a myriad of officers from China with sneaking the secrets of the U.S.

In a blog post, Secureworks stated that the interest of the Volt Typhoon in operational security possibly has its roots in the U.S. accusations along with the enhanced pressure coming from Chinese leaders to refrain from the scrutiny of cyberespionage acts.

Other Hacking Groups Across the Globe

Some other hacking groups all over the world are:

ALSO READ: New petaFLOPs supercomputers will be launched by India in 2023. What are petaFLOPs?