A man alleged to be behind the recent Salt Typhoon US telecoms network and US Treasury department breaches has been sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Yin Kecheng “has been a cyber actor for over a decade and is affiliated with the People’s Republic of China Ministry of State Security (MSS)”, says the Treasury Office. Yin is alleged to have had direct and associated involvement in both breaches.
Two key individuals in President Donald Trump’s new administration, Elon Musk, and the president’s nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, have specifically cited the two devastating breaches as the prime examples of why the nation’s cybersecurity strategy is in pressingly urgent need of being overhauled.
According to the Treasury Department: “Salt Typhoon has been active since at least 2019 and has been responsible for numerous compromises of US companies in the communications sector. The Salt Typhoon intrusions are one example of an increasing number of PRC state-backed malicious cyber activities, which necessitate costly remediation efforts.”
China will ramp up cyber-attacks on the US
President Trump’s increasingly forceful response to the growing Chinese threat will inevitably result in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ramping up cyber-attacks on US infrastructure. China is already understood to have set a deadline of 2027 to be ready for a planned invasion of Taiwan. The US would see this incursion as posing an unacceptable threat to its ally, Japan. As the clock ticks closer to 2027, the CCP will be deploying its regiments of hackers and software engineers to do maximum damage to the US.
With appointments such as Elon Musk, who now appears to be shouldering the Herculean task of plugging the gaps in the nation’s cyber defenses, President Trump is sending a clear message to China that the US is determined to do what it takes to counter the threat of Chinese cyber-espionage.
“The Treasury Department will continue to use its authorities to hold accountable malicious cyber actors who target the American people, our companies, and the United States government, including those who have targeted the Treasury Department specifically,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Adewale O. Adeyemo.
President Trump this week also sent a clear message that he is more concerned about tackling the cyber threat presented by potentially hostile nation-states such as China, Russia, and Iran than he is in making examples of US citizens. This week has also seen the president grant a pardon to Ross William Ulbricht, alias “Dread Pirate Roberts”, the founder of the Silk Road dark web marketplace, which subsequently became used as a site for the illegal selling of drugs.
“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern-day weaponization of government against me…He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!” said the president in a post on the Truth Social site on Tuesday.
The US Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program is continuing to offer a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of any person who, while acting at the direction or under the control of a foreign government, engages in certain malicious cyber activities against U.S. critical infrastructure. More information about this reward offer is located on the Rewards for Justice website.
