The news will raise concerns over the vulnerability of US critical infrastructure to cyber attacks. The United States has accused Typhoon Volt this year of infiltrating networks controlling vital US services, including some of the country's water facilities, power grids and communications sectors, with the aim of disrupting future crises such as an invasion of Taiwan.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in an email that Vault Typhoon is actually ransomware carried out by a group of cybercriminals calling themselves Dark Power and is not sponsored by any state or region. He said China has received indications that US intelligence groups have secretly colluded with cybersecurity firms to falsely accuse China of supporting cyberattacks against the US as part of congressional efforts to boost the budget and government contracts.
The virus outbreak began in late June
According to US media reports, Santa Clara, California-based company Versa said it had released an emergency patch for the virus in late June. However, it was only in July that consumers started reporting the issue en masse after a customer reported it. Versa said the customer did not follow previously published guidelines on how to protect their systems through firewall rules and other measures.