FBI, NSA warn of China-linked cyber actors compromising devices for botnet; Integrity Technology Group's network consisted of over 260,000 devices globally as of June

The FBI, National Security Agency and Cyber National Mission Force last week issued a joint advisory about recent actions of China-linked cyber actors compromising thousands of small or home office routers, firewalls, network-attached storage and other internet devices to create a botnet for malicious activity. The actors, known as Integrity Technology Group, would then use the botnet to conceal their identities while deploying denial of service attacks or attacking targeted U.S. networks. As of June the group's botnet consisted of more than 260,000 devices, with victim devices located in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia. 

“The good news of this story is that the U.S. government and its allies were able to detect and disrupt this campaign known as ‘Flax Typhoon,’ perpetrated by the Chinese communist government,” said John Riggi, AHA national advisor for cybersecurity and risk. “The bad news is that these campaigns highlight the aggressive operational tempo by China to infiltrate our critical infrastructure, and preposition for potential future offensive cyber operations. Once again, China is penetrating insecure small office and home routers to gain a foothold to access our critical infrastructure. As the hybrid work environment becomes more routine, it is recommended that hospitals and health systems remind staff and third parties of the recommended mitigations contained in this alert, including replacing default passwords on routers with strong passwords.” 

For more information on this or other cyber and risk issues, contact Riggi at jriggi@aha.org. For the latest cyber and risk resources and threat intelligence, visit aha.org/cybersecurity.