China has carried out more cyberattacks against the United States than all other major countries combined, the FBI director has claimed.
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In a speech earlier this week, Christopher Wray said the FBI is currently investigating more than 2,000 incidents in which China has attempted to "steal our information and technology.".
According to Wray, China has stolen “staggering volumes” of information from American companies and their endpoints, causing profound damage that is destroying jobs across multiple industries. We’ve reached a point where the FBI is opening about two new investigations every day.
Recruitment of criminals
China is able to do this, Wray added, with “a lot of funding and sophisticated tools.” In addition, it often employs other cybercriminal groups.
Wray noted that the Chinese are also causing a lot of collateral damage along the way, citing the recent hack of Microsoft Exchange that “compromised the networks of more than 10,000 American companies in a single campaign.”
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Wray accused the Chinese of not honoring their own agreements. “In 2015, the Chinese government publicly promised to stop transferring compromised American technology to Chinese companies, but their cyber theft program continued to be robust.” Even the China-US agreement, which was reached in 2015, did not stop them from distributing malware and wreaking havoc:
“And in recent years, they have hit more and more companies and workers. We’ve seen small companies developing important drugs being looted. We’ve seen large managed service providers remotely manage IT services for thousands of other businesses, so the Chinese government could steal their trusted connections to their customers and hack those companies as well.”.
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But the US has not been idle either, he said, citing the move against Huawei. However, he does not expect the fight against China to end anytime soon.
Information source: techradar.com
