Is the Chinese Volt Typhoon Coming for Your Computer?

There’s nothing new about cyber-warfare. It has been going on for decades.

Mostly it consists of intercepting electronic signals and recording the information. If signals are encrypted, then sophisticated decryption methods are used. This kind of signals intelligence (SIGINT) is practiced by all major intelligence agencies, but the U.S. is perhaps the best.

This work is not done by the CIA but is the specialty of the National Security Agency (NSA) based at Fort Mead, located in Maryland, about halfway between Baltimore and Washington, DC.

Other types of cyber-intelligence are more sophisticated, including tapping undersea internet fiber-optic cables, spying from space satellites, and intercepting all kinds of internet data, including your email. Few Americans realize that 100% of international phone calls to or from the U.S. are recorded by the NSA; you don’t have to be a terrorist to be subject to that kind of surveillance.

One of the most dangerous forms of cyber-warfare is spyware, or malware. This is computer code that is planted on a device and then spreads like a virus through linked devices to servers and can eventually infect broad populations of internet users.

Some users have firewall protections against this. But hackers use everything from tainted flash drives to clever promotions designed to get unsuspecting users to click on them. Once you do that, the enemy code is on your system.

A recent example of an extremely dangerous form of malware is described in this article. China created malware called Volt Typhoon and managed to plant this code on servers and other devices in Guam. Guam may be known as an attractive tropical island (it is, I’ve been there), but it’s one of the most sensitive locations in the entire U.S. military and intelligence complex.

It’s a location for strategic bombers, a major naval base, and extensive surveillance activities. It’s the westernmost piece of U.S. territory and the closest to China.

It makes sense for China to attack systems on Guam. They can both gather information and possibly disrupt systems needed for national defense in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan or Japan.

Normally a breach of this kind would be kept secret, but Volt Typhoon infected so many civilian systems that it was necessary to make the threat public and offer software fixes to try to contain the damage.

Get ready for more of this. As the animosity in relations between China and the U.S. grows, the scope and tempo of cyber-attacks grows also. Investors will likely be caught in the crossfire.

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