{"id":92087,"date":"2023-05-26T06:51:53","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T06:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/?p=4099892"},"modified":"2023-05-26T06:51:53","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T06:51:53","slug":"microsoft-warns-of-volt-typhoon-latest-salvo-in-global-cyberwar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/?p=92087","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft warns of Volt Typhoon, latest salvo in global cyberwar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image: pinkeyes\/Adobe Stock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Microsoft\u2019s warning on Wednesday that the China-sponsored actor Volt Typhoon attacked U.S. infrastructure<\/a> put a hard emphasis on presentations by cybersecurity and international affairs experts that a global war in cyberspace is pitting authoritarian regimes against democracies.<\/p>\n

Jump to:<\/p>\n

China\u2019s commitment to cyberwarfare<\/h2>\n

Microsoft\u2019s notification pointed out that Volt Typhoon \u2014 which hit organizations in sectors spanning IT, communications, manufacturing, utility, transportation, construction, maritime, government and education \u2014 has been pursuing a \u201cliving off the land\u201d strategy focused on data exfiltration since 2021. The tactic typically uses social engineering exploits like phishing to access networks invisibly by riding on legitimate software. It uses a Fortinet exploit to gain access and uses valid accounts to persist (Figure A<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Figure A<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Volt Typhoon attack diagram. Image: Microsoft<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nadir Izrael, the chief technology officer and co-founder of the Armis security firm, pointed out that China\u2019s defense budget has been increasing over the years, reaching an estimated $178 billion in 2020<\/a>. \u201cThis growing investment has enabled China to build up its cyber capabilities, with more than 50,000 cyber soldiers and an advanced cyberwarfare unit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He added that China\u2019s investment in offensive cyber capabilities has created \u201ca global weapon in its arsenal to rattle critical infrastructure across nearly every sector \u2014 from communications to maritime \u2014 and interrupt U.S. citizens\u2019 lives.\u201d He said, \u201cCyberwarfare is an incredibly impactful, cost-effective tool for China to disrupt world order.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Armis, he has been predicting these threats since January after finding that 33% of global organizations are not taking the threat of cyberwarfare threats seriously<\/a>. He has been urging governments and businesses across sectors to start putting in place procedures to counteract these threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the world becomes increasingly digitized, cyberwarfare is modern warfare,\u201d Armis said. \u201cThis has to be a wake-up call for the U.S. and western nations.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the WithSecure Sphere23 conference in Helsinki, Finland, before this security news had crossed the wires, Jessica Berlin, a Germany-based foreign policy analyst and founder of the consultancy CoStruct, said the U.S., the European Union and other democracies have not awakened to the implications of cyberwarfare by Russia, China and North Korea. She said these countries are engaged in a cybernetic world war \u2014 one that autocracies have the upper hand in because they have fully acknowledged and embraced it and have committed to waging it as such.<\/p>\n

She told TechRepublic that tech and security companies could play a key role in awakening citizens and governments to this fact by being more transparent about attacks. She also noted the European Union\u2019s General Data Protection Regulation, which has been in effect for five years, has been a powerful tool for oversight of digital information, data provenance and misinformation on social platforms.<\/p>\n

Professionalization of cybercrime lowers bar to entry<\/h2>\n

Stephen Robinson, a senior threat intelligence analyst at WithSecure, said the cybercriminal ecosystem\u2019s mirroring of legitimate business has made it easier for state actors and less sophisticated groups to buy what they can\u2019t make. This professionalization of cybercrime<\/a> has created a formal service sector. \u201cThey are outsourcing functions, hiring freelancers, subcontracting; criminal service providers have sprung up, and their existence is industrializing exploitation,\u201d said Robinson.<\/p>\n

The success of the criminal as-a-service model is expedited by such frameworks as Tor anonymous data transfer and cryptocurrency, noted Robinson, who delineated some dark web service verticals.<\/p>\n