CRS Reports – Week of 10-19-24 – Typhoon Hacks

This week the Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a report on “Salt Typhoon Hacks of Telecommunications Companies and Federal Response Implications”. This report does not address the tools, techniques and tactics used by the apparently Chinese hacking groups behind the Volt, Flax, and Salt Typhoon attacks on communications sector target. Rather it briefly looks at the federal response to those attacks and then provides a discussion about activities that Congress might wish to consider to address the recent/current attacks and make future such attacks more difficult.

Specifically, it looks at issues related to:

• The Cyber Unified Coordination Group (Cyber UCG) that is (apparently) currently looking at the attacks,

• The Cyber Safety Review Board that has looked at similar large-scale attacks, and

• The cyber preparedness activities that CISA is supposed to undertake to prevent, protect, respond, and recover from such threats.

The first two activities are not specifically authorized (or funded) by Congress, but the report notes that Congress may wish to take actions to rectify that lack of official status.