China cyber threat to US Water Systems!

SCMagazine.com reported that “The U.S. government has been focused on protecting critical infrastructure this week with a push by CISA, the EPA and FBI to educate the water and wastewater systems sector on how to better secure their facilities from cyberattacks – and the Feb. 21 Biden administration executive order (EO) to further bolster the maritime sector and offer improved security requirements for the nation’s ports.”  The February 22, 2024 report entitled “US sounds cybersecurity alarm over water systems in latest wave of China-linked warnings” (https://www.scmagazine.com/news/us-offensive-to-protect-critical-infrastructure-points-to-growing-cyber-conflict-with-china) included these comments:

 All of this comes in the wake of Thursday’s news that at least 500 documents posted on GitHub last week exposed that a Chinese hacking group linked to Beijing – i-SOON – has launched attacks over the past decade on at least 14 governments worldwide as well as critical infrastructure.

“The I-Soon leaks show a company competing for low-value contracts coming from many parts of China's government to conduct hacking campaigns,” said Dakota Cary, strategic advisory consultant at SentinelOne, who co-authored a Feb. 21 blog on i-SOON with Aleksandar Milenkoski. “The price point of these operations, like hacking into the Vietnamese Ministry of the Economy for $55,000, suggests a mature hack-for-hire market in China. As FBI Director Christopher Wray has testified to the number of hackers China's government employs in comparison to the U.S., we can now see the evidence of their maturity in the fees on offer to hackers.”

Anyone surprised? I doubt it!