Botnet’s back, tell a friend. [Research Saturday]

CyberWire Daily

N2K Networks, Inc.

Daily News, Tech News, News, Technology

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we are joined by Silas Cutler, Principal Security Researcher at Censys, asking the important question of "Will the Real Volt Typhoon Please Stand Up?" The FBI's disruption of the KV Botnet in December 2023, attributed to the Chinese threat group Volt Typhoon, targeted infected systems but did not affect the botnet's control infrastructure. Despite law enforcement efforts and technical exposure, the botnet's infrastructure has remained largely stable, with only changes in hosting providers, raising questions about whether another party operates the botnet. Censys scanning data from 2024 shows a shift in the botnet's control servers, indicating a response to disruption attempts, while the botnet's operators have shown limited efforts to obscure their infrastructure. The research can be found here: Will the Real Volt Typhoon Please Stand Up? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Cyberwire Network, powered by N2K.
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1:27.1	Music Hello, everyone, and welcome to the CyberWires Research Saturday. I'm Dave Bittner, and this is our weekly
1:40.8	conversation with researchers and analysts tracking down the threats and vulnerabilities,
1:46.0	solving some of the hard problems and protecting ourselves in a rapidly evolving cyberspace.
1:51.8	Thanks for joining us.
1:58.3	And as we kind of evaluated it more and more, it's started to become clear that it looks like the activity that is, you know, the KD Dotnet side likely may be a different actor or an actor working in direct support of Volt Typhoon.
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