Australia has joined the Five Eyes Security Alliance in condemning a recent cyberattack by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that has targeted critical infrastructure networks across the United States.
The joint advisory was issued after it was discovered that a recent “cluster of activity” was associated with the CCP’s hacking group, Volt Typhoon—a state-sponsored actor typically focused on espionage and information gathering.
The Five Eyes alliance—an intelligence alliance between the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—also believes that the same techniques used by the CCP “could” be applied against other sectors worldwide.
In a joint statement published by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) on May 25, Australia, along with the security alliance, said one of the primary tactics used by the cyber actor, in this case, the CCP, is “living off the land”—where the actor blends in with normal Windows systems to evade detection. This tactic exploits legitimate pathways instead of malware….