Chinese hackers are getting bolder by the day and now have hacked into top US telecommunication companies’ networks. US FBI and CISA have labelled this as the “worst ever” espionage attempt in the history. The US agencies have tapped into the source of the hack and have found out that the Chinese hackers have stolen call records of top political and government officials during the recent US elections.
The Chinese hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon is in the middle of this huge scandal. As per the US intelligence the Chinese hackers were even able to listen to conversation between President elect Donald Trump and Vice-President elect JD Vance. They hacked into the vulnerable US telecommunication equipment, broadband networks, and computers to extract secret information and as perceived the repercussion of this leak is far more dangerous for the US. Investigators have also found that Chinese cyber bullies have access to US Federal government system used for court-mandated wiretapping requests – a big time security breach.
US Senate Intelligence Committee chairman and Virginia senator Mark Warner has revealed that the situation is far serious than what’s thought of. Warner was quoted informing the media that “The barn door is still wide open, or mostly open,” while explaining that crucial telephone conversations and text messages were out there with the Chinese. He also warned that the threat is not yet over because the hackers might still be listening to our phone conversations and reading the text messages. “We’ve not found everywhere they are,” he further informed.
All previous infiltrations by hackers now look small. “This is far and away the most serious telecom hack in our history,” Senator Warner told media. “This makes Colonial Pipeline and Solar Winds look like small potatoes,” he said, referring to two major Russian state-backed intrusions targeting the US in 2021 and 2019, respectively. Little respite came from the fact that messages on platforms like Signal, Apple’s iMessage, and WhatsApp were still off-limit for the Chinese hackers, but big chunk of data was till extracted from local networks. The cyber attackers prime targets were national security officials and politicians, and over 150 victims were notified by the FBI regarding the breach.
In the middle of this goof-up the US authorities have officials like the Federal Communications Commission Brendan Carr who has been following the trail and vowed to fix the c scandal. “Cybersecurity is going to be an incredibly important issue,” he told reporters. “National security is going to be a top priority,” he added.
Satya Nadella led Microsoft played a huge part in these investigations because it had one of the most secure network that Salt Typhoon’s hackers were not able to break. But Telecom companies such as Bellevue and T-Mobile were still unaware this huge security scare. The Microsoft researchers were the first to spot unusual activities on its network and informed this to the US officials that kick-started this investigation.
The CEOs of AT&T and Verizon were also called in by the US officials to check their telecom network’s stability. T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert informed media that he had earlier doubted that even his company was compromised by the Chinese cyberattack. But T-Mobile’s security controls, network structure and monitoring system ensured that there was no significant impact to its customers’ private information.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has taken this China cyber threat seriously and vowed that security of his network is above all else. He has started a $4 million bug bounty program that will award security researchers for finding gaps and glitches in Microsoft’s cloud and AI systems.
All this while Beijing, as usual, is in a denial mode and accused America of running a false narrative against China. Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington said, “For quite some time, the US side has been floating all sorts of disinformation about threats of “Chinese hackers” to serve its own geopolitical purposes.” He ensured that China is firm on its policies in lieu of cyber attacks and would combat all such incidents with utmost sincerity.
Experts believe that now when the Trump administration will constitute it would already be tackling the Chinese cyber threat. Trump as a leader is very stringent against China and would follow a policy of offense being the best act of defense.
Telecom companies — including Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile — may still not know about the hack if it weren’t for Microsoft security researchers spotting unusual activity earlier this year, the NYT noted. That set off a secret investigation this summer into an attack known as “Salt Typhoon.” The CEOs of AT&T and Verizon attended a White House meeting Friday to discuss the attack. The NYT reported that T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, who “initially doubted that the company had been compromised by the Chinese,” sent a deputy to the meeting.