(Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A notorious Chinese state-sponsored hacking group may have also infiltrated satellite internet provider Viasat, after breaching several US mobile carriers and ISPs.
The group, “Salt Typhoon,” grabbed headlines last year for a sweeping spying campaign that involved hacking numerous US telecommunications providers. Bloomberg now reports that California-based Viasat is among the victims; the breach was discovered earlier this year.
In a statement, Viasat confirmed it uncovered a hacking incident, but the company is refraining from going into details, citing the US government’s involvement in the investigation.
“Viasat and its independent third-party cybersecurity partner investigated a report of unauthorized access through a compromised device,” the satellite internet provider said. “Upon completing a thorough investigation, no evidence was found to suggest any impact to customers.”
“Viasat believes that the incident has been remediated and has not detected any recent activity related to this event,” the company added.
(Credit: Bill Hinton Photography via Getty Images)Chinese hackers might have targeted Viasat because the company serves the US government, in addition to many maritime and aviation-related customers. The US military also uses Viasat’s satellite service. Last month, the company reported 189,000 US-fixed broadband subscribers.
The attempted hack of Viasat is another indicator of how brazen China’s state-sponsored hacking has become. The breach was so bad that Salt Typhoon had the capability to collect phone records on millions of Americans and spy on phones belonging to top politicians, reportedly including Donald Trump.
Bloomberg adds that the FBI’s investigation into Salt Typhoon has found the hack impacted “some 100 million records belonging to 1.3 million users, mostly in the Washington, DC area.” Although Salt Typhoon appears to have gone dormant, US lawmakers and officials remain concerned that the Chinese hackers could strike again by targeting vulnerable US systems.
As for Viasat, the company also suffered a separate hack in 2022 involving malware capable of wiping data from its modem and routers. The incident caused a massive outage and was later blamed on Russian state-hackers attempting to disrupt internet services in Ukraine.