Christopher Wray, the Director of the FBI, declared on Monday that the US depends heavily on working together with the public and private sectors to recognize and prevent issues. Along with international and domestic law enforcement, the FBI has initiated to break down the infrastructure of ransomware and organizations attached to it. Wray further noted that "individuals engaged in criminal activity and rival governments" are taking advantage of artificial intelligence.
At the mWise Conference in Washington on Monday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the area of cybercriminal activity and adversarial nation-state activity is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate. He declared that the federal government is more dependent than ever on private sector assistance to secure U.S. infrastructure. Google's Mandiant, which hosted the conference, has previously been involved in efforts to thwart Qakbot botnet and the Hive ransomware group along with international and domestic law enforcement. Wray warned that Chinese hackers could take advantage of artificial intelligence to overpower U.S. defenses, as they already outnumber the FBI's cyber and intelligence agents by 50 to 1.
In addition, North Korean hacking groups are actively searching for espionage and financial profit for their state, while Russian hackers have launched attacks around the world - ranging from extorting money to damaging infrastructure in Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
The Director praised the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Agency's effectiveness and spoke of the need for the public and private sector to collaborate on threat identification and mitigation. Wray remarked on the 2021 Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, where a swift response and information sharing with the FBI through Mandiant allowed the agency to identify the perpetrators quickly. Finally, Wray said that the private sector need not fear the FBI's involvement in such incidents, as they will not arrive in "raid jackets".
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