US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Christopher Wray used his keynote speech at the weekend’s Munich Cyber Security Conference, which many regard as the security version of Davos, to effectively declare cyber-war on the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
“Our adversaries have been improving exponentially,” warns Wray. “Chief among those adversaries is the Chinese government…the cyber threat posed by the Chinese government is massive.”
Wray added that China’s hacking program is larger than that of all the other major world nations combined and that the PRC is using AI technology stolen from the Western powers to vastly increase the present threat. The FBI director told the major world powers assembled in Munich at the weekend that a new enhanced level of cooperation between government agencies such as his and the private sector is the only way to counter this new Red Menace.
“You might find your companies harassed and hacked by a web of corporate CCP [Chinese Communist Party] proxies, CCP hackers lurking in your power facilities and your phone companies, waiting to take them down,” says Wray.
He added, however, that China is not the West’s only major adversary in the growing global cyber conflict. Wray named Russia, Iran and North Korea as the other leading hostile powers in cyberspace, warning that, ever since it invaded Ukraine, Russia has been carrying out extensive cyber reconnaissance of the energy sector in the US, which it could try to weaponize at any time.
Private-sector call to arms
But he also pointed to recent successes in the currently escalating cyber conflict. These include Operation Ember, a newly-announced operation the FBI co-ordinated in order to kick Russian military intelligence hackers off well over 1,000 business and domestic routers. Wray also used the speech to make a call to cyber-arms not only to other Western security forces, but also to the private sector operating in regions targeted by countries such as Russia and China.
“At the Bureau we are doubling down on our work with the private sector…as partners who can not only share valuable information but also join in operations themselves.”
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), NSA and FBI also recently warned “that People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored cyber actors are seeking to pre-position themselves on IT networks for disruptive or destructive cyberattacks against U.S. critical infrastructure in the event of a major crisis or conflict with the United States.”
