FBI places bounty on Salt Typhoon, $10 million for info on infamous Chinese hacking group

• FBI is asking the public for help identifying Salt Typhoon
• It says relevant information could result in a bounty of up to $10 million
• The Chinese are allegedly involved in attacks on US critical infrastructure

Want to earn $10 million? Easy! All you need to do is have actionable insight on Salt Typhoon, the infamous Chinese hacking collective.

Late last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) posted a new announcement, asking the public to help identify the key people of the notorious Chinese state-sponsored threat actor.

Those who provide the law enforcement agency with proper intel can expect a reward of up to $10 million.

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Bounty rewards

“FBI is issuing this announcement to ask the public to report information about PRC-affiliated activity publicly tracked as "Salt Typhoon" and the compromise of multiple US telecommunications companies, especially information about specific individuals behind the campaign,” the FBI’s announcement reads.

“Investigation into these actors and their activity revealed a broad and significant cyber campaign to leverage access into these networks to target victims on a global scale. This activity resulted in the theft of call data logs, a limited number of private communications involving identified victims, and the copying of select information subject to court-ordered US law enforcement requests.”

The FBI also said that the US Department of State’s Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program is offering a reward of “up to $10 million for information about foreign government-linked individuals participating in certain malicious cyber activities against US critical infrastructure”, in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

From the wording of the announcement, it would seem that the bounty stretches beyond Salt Typhoon and into other groups that attacked US critical infrastructure firms. Those would probably include Volt Typhoon as well - another Chinese state-sponsored group that was observed going after the same targets.

Microsoft is tracking multiple “Typhoon” threat actors, all of them from China. These groups, involved in everything from cyber-espionage to sabotage and financial crime, are called Brass Typhoon, Purple Typhoon, Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, Brocade Typhoon, and Salmon Typhoon, to name a few.

Via Cybernews

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