Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, claims a hacking group called "Salt Typhoon" is responsible for unleashing the "worst telecom hack in our nation's history."
The stolen data was intended for U.S. law enforcement agencies to use, but instead ended up in the hands of officials in Beijing, we are told.
Salt Typhoon reportedly obtained access to cables that allowed them to listen live to audio calls, some of which were routed through multiple telecom networks via "trust" connections that were exploited.
Less than 150 people were directly affected by the breach, most of them in the nation's capital. However, potentially "millions" of people had their call and text records hacked by the group, which could use information therein to target Americans for surveillance.
(Related: Back in the summer, one of the world's largest IT providers that services the U.S. military-industrial complex suffered a major cybersecurity breach that put the U.S. government's most sensitive files at risk of being publicly leaked.)
Chinese hackers also went after Trump, Vance
Washington is really upset about this whole thing because it and only it is allowed to spy on Americans like this. The fact that China allegedly joined in on the fun as well has the U.S. political elite fuming mad.
The telecom industry has known about the cyberattack since at least September, which is when it started notifying the government that something illicit was taking place.
According to Warner, what Salt Typhoon did makes the Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds hacks "look like child's play" – and the intruders, he says, are still active.
Washington is calling the breach an espionage operation, not a prelude to infrastructure sabotage like some believe. Time will tell, of course, which scenario ends up being true.
Hackers from Salt Typhoon have apparently broken into a government system that archives U.S. law enforcement's criminal wiretap requests so individuals of interest can be identified by the authorities. As far as is being reported, the hackers did not compromise the actual wiretapping system used to listen in on people's calls.
Washington considers its wiretapping system to be a "lawful intercept" mechanism, but not when China uses it. The system contains unencrypted communications including text messages that were captured in the breach, though all end-to-end encrypted communications such as the kind used on Signal are said to remain secure.
Very little is known beyond that as the Joe Biden regime is keeping the matter close to the chest. The FBI and CISA issued a joint statement claiming that the perpetrators have been identified. We also now know that the telecom firms affected include AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.
"This is an ongoing effort by China to infiltrate telecom systems around the world to exfiltrate huge amounts of data," Warner claims about the purpose behind the attack.
The media is also reporting that President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance were also hacked by China, as were other key political figures including folks from the campaign of Kamala Harris as well as from the State Department.
This latest intrusion was not directly election-related, just to be clear. The hacking occurred months before Election Day with some incidents having happened more than a year ago before the October 7 events in Israel.
Beijing, meanwhile, denies any knowledge of the attack. Officials there claim they do not employ anyone to infiltrate foreign computer systems and that this cyberattack must have been perpetrated by someone else.
The latest news about communist China can be found at Communism.news.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.
