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The FBI has confirmed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached multiple telecommunication firms to steal data on US politicians.
The FBI issued its statement today following a report that a Chinese hacking group, dubbed Salt Typhoon, may have spied on phones belonging to incoming US President Donald Trump and VP JD Vance. The agency joined the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in describing the Chinese hacking activities as "a broad and significant cyber espionage campaign."
In a statement, the agencies said: “Specifically, we have identified that PRC-affiliated actors have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies to enable the theft of customer call records data, the compromise of private communications of a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or political activity, and the copying of certain information that was subject to US law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders.”
The effort to copy law enforcement requests alludes to how the Chinese hackers reportedly tried to access the network infrastructure that ISPs such as AT&T and Verizon use to answer court-authorized wiretapping requests. As a result, the hacking campaign may have given China a foothold into the US’s own surveillance network to intercept internet-based communications.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal also reported that the Chinese hackers successfully compromised cell phone lines belonging to a number of senior national security and policy officials. “The hackers appeared to have had the ability to access the phone data of virtually any American who is a customer of a compromised carrier," the Journal added, although only several dozen political and national security figures were ultimately targeted.
The FBI didn’t elaborate on its investigation, but there’s evidence that Chinese hackers have exploited software flaws to break into the telecom firms. For now, the agency only said: “We expect our understanding of these compromises to grow as the investigation continues.”