This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast. All right, listeners, Ting here, diving straight into this week’s most jaw-dropping installment of Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege. Let’s skip the pleasantries and jack in—because the cyber ops unleashed by Chinese state-backed groups in the past few days have redefined ‘sophisticated.’ Picture this: the Salt Typhoon group, previously infamous for that globe-spanning telecom espionage campaign, is back and now burrowing even deeper into America’s digital veins. The new joint advisory from CISA, the NSA, the FBI, and partners from the UK and Japan lands today—think of it as a blockbuster alert, summoning every critical infrastructure defender to battle stations. According to Assistant Director Brett Leatherman at the FBI, Salt Typhoon isn’t stopping at telecom—government, transportation, military, even hotel networks are all fair game. The attack methodologies read like a red team’s fantasy. Salt Typhoon and cohorts—OPERATOR PANDA, RedMike, GhostEmperor, and UNC5807—are exploiting ancient router vulnerabilities, some going back to 2018, in hardware nobody really thought to patch. They modify the firmware of provider edge routers, giving themselves persistence so long-term you’d think they’d left a lease agreement. Once entrenched, they tap into the lawful intercept systems where, yes, even wiretap requests meant for surveilling spies are now being surveilled by spies. That, my friends, is some cyber-Inception. Attribution this week has become embarrassingly specific. The US, UK, Germany, and Japan have openly accused three Chinese tech firms—Sichuan Juxinhe, Beijing Huanyu Tianqiong, and Sichuan Zhixin Ruijie—of being arms of the Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army, not just contractors but strategic partners in espionage. Madhu Gottumukkala at CISA put it bluntly: this is a deliberate, sustained campaign to keep Chinese actors lurking undetected in America’s most vital digital corridors. Defensive measures are getting sharper. CISA’s guidance: patch those Known Exploited Vulnerabilities, log everything centrally, and, if you run major infrastructure, start threat hunting yesterday. Sandra Joyce from Google’s Threat Intelligence Group dropped a tantalizing hint: Google’s new cyber “disruption unit” is prepping to flip the script from passive defense to active takedowns and legal disruption. Upping the ante, some U.S. officials are debating offensive cyber moves—not just playing goalie, but charging the field. But what are the lessons? Marc Rogers, the telecom security veteran, put it best: “We need to move faster.” Too many organizations missed patches, under-invested in zero-trust, and let legacy infrastructure become an open door. The DHS and CISA count a 65% jump in ransomware targeting government agencies—ransom threats have become table stakes, but espionage is the main act. To every organization listening in: implement those advisories, hunt for the invisible, and consider that if you don’t know where Salt Typhoon is in your system, they probably are. The cyber battlefield just went global, and it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Thanks for tuning into Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege. Don’t forget to subscribe to keep your threat intel sharper than your firewall. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta