U.S. officials have revealed that the Chinese attack on U.S. telecoms has not yet been completely thwarted. Remnants of the group known as Salt Typhoon still linger in telecom firms’ networks across the country and it is difficult to say when all of them will be identified and kicked out.
The attack — which took place in October — led to Chinese hackers breaching multiple companies including AT&T, Verizon and possibly T-Mobile as well. Their goal was to access information on U.S. government officials and they specifically targeted the phones of president elect Donald Trump and vice president elect JD Vance.
In addition the hackers were able to tap into the cellphone lines of some politicians and government workers. They got access to text messages, call logs and bits of call audio from the hacked cellphone lines.
Since the discovery of this group the telecom companies have been working with security officials to expel the intruders from their networks. Jeff Greene — who works for the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency — said that the hackers were altering their tactics whenever the media talked about what U.S. officials knew. This makes it very likely that the current report we have is either outdated or missing pieces of the puzzle.
T-Mobile claims it was not breached by Chinese hackers. | Image credit — Bloomberg
Making use of various vulnerabilities these hackers have been able to penetrate deep into U.S. networks. T-Mobile caught suspicious behavior that may have been the same hackers probing its network for any backdoors or oversights in security. The company says it kicked all of the suspicious agents off of its network after verifying the irregular nature of their activities.
This whole ordeal was alarming enough that agencies in other countries are also educating their network engineers on how to recognize Salt Typhoon attacks. U.S. officials claim that Salt Typhoon is acting at the behest of the Chinese government as a direct attack against the country.
If telecom companies and security agencies know how deep into the system these hackers are then they’re staying quiet about it. Greene says they’re still working on figuring that out which may be untrue because they don’t want to reveal that they have the upper hand.
I’m not nearly knowledgeable enough about this as I’d like to be but I do wonder if all of this has anything to do with the fact that telecom companies were using Chinese gear in their networks.
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Abdullah loves smartphones, Virtual Reality, and audio gear. Though he covers a wide range of news his favorite is always when he gets to talk about the newest VR venture or when Apple sets the industry ablaze with another phenomenal release.
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