US seizes domains of Chinese botnet used to hack NASA, Justice Department, and the Senate
The FBI has seized a series of domains that were used by a large-scale botnet to coordinate and launch China-backed cyberattacks against American targets. According to the Justice Department’s statement on Wednesday, the seizures of the botnet’s domains deny the operators access to the platforms.
Why It Matters
This story touches on united-states, domains, chinese — topics readers are actively tracking. Review and add editorial context before publishing.
Key Facts
- Fact 1: The hacks date back to 2018, and affected NASA, the Federal Reserve, and the Departments of Energy, Justice, and Health and Human Services.
- Fact 2: Senate was compromised as recently as 2026, according to the government’s affidavit seeking a court order to seize the botnet’s domains filed earlier this week.
- Fact 3: He can be reached via encrypted message at zackwhittaker.1337 on Signal.
The FBI has seized a series of domains that were used by a large-scale botnet to coordinate and launch China-backed cyberattacks against American targets. According to the Justice Department’s statement on Wednesday, the seizures of the botnet’s domains deny the operators access to the platforms.
The botnet was allegedly used by the Chinese government to break into computers across the United States, including systems at hospitals, defense contractors, and several federal government departments. Prosecutors said the China state-sponsored group, known as QTFY, was run by a Chinese company called Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Tech, which created and operated the botnet of thousands of compromised internet-connected devices. The botnet aimed to serve as obfuscation networks, which hide the malicious traffic of hackers to make their activity more difficult to detect.
(Original synthesis pending human/AI review — generated by the stub provider by selecting real sentences from the source material, not by writing new analysis or commentary.)
Original source: TechCrunch
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