Chinese Hackers Embedded Malware In US Infrastructure, US Renews Controversial Section 702

Section 702 allows for data to be collected on Americans who are in communication with people who are located overseas.

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE - According to the Director of the FBI, Chinese state-sponsored hackers have hidden exploits within key U.S. infrastructure and are just waiting “for the right moment to deal a devastating blow”.

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According to FBI Director Chris Wray, the risks posed by the Chinese government to the United States previously spoken of in previous reports are no longer “over the horizon” but are “upon us now”.

“I'm talking about everything from indiscriminate hacking to economic espionage to transnational repression to fentanyl and the precursor chemicals that are coming out of China and ending up in our communities. 

What we're facing today is the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] throwing its whole government into undermining the security of the rule-of-law world,” Wray said.

The threat posed by China is not just in one area, but “a combined counterintelligence, cybersecurity, and criminal threat,” he added, and said, “Part of that threat is driven by the CCP's aspirations to wealth and power”.

Wray said that China has no reservations about “stealing their way to the top”, hitting just about every U.S. industry including:

• Biotech Industry

• Aviation Field

• Advanced Technologies

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Healthcare Industry

• Agricultural Industry

• Intellectual Property

• Technology Industry

• Research Industry

“You could close your eyes and pull an industry or sector out of a hat and, chances are, Beijing has targeted it,” Wray said.

“The PRC is engaged in the largest and most sophisticated theft of intellectual property and expertise in the history of the world, leveraging its most powerful weapons, starting with cyber.”

He then added a sense of scale about China’s cyber related activities and said, “If all of the FBI’s cyber agents and cyber intelligence analysts focused exclusively on China—and not on ransomware, Iran, or Russia—Chinese hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1”.

“And that's probably a conservative estimate because the Chinese government is also showing a penchant for hiring cybercriminals to do its bidding—in effect, cyber mercenaries—further supplementing its cyber workforce,” he added.

US Senate Reauthorizes Section 702 Of The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

At the end of December of last year, Wray had urged lawmakers to renew the FBI's ability to gather electronic data under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA before the law expired at the end of 2023, saying that allowing it to expire would be tantamount to "unilateral disarmament".

On April 20th, 2024 the White House announced that the Biden Administration reauthorized Section 702, extending it to 2026. Although the FBI says that it is necessary for maintaining national security, it had been abused and led to information being collected on an unknown number of American citizens.

What Is Section 702?

Press Secretary for the Department of Defense Pat Ryder said that, “Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, allows us to collect vital intelligence, importantly under federal court supervision, of non-U.S. persons who are located abroad who use U.S. communication services and whose communications are assessed by our Intelligence Community to have foreign intelligence value”.

Section 702 Allows Data Collection On American Citizens Under Certain Conditions, Has Been Abused