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The "Salt Typhoon" Chinese hacking group breached at least eight US telecommunications companies in a months-long effort to spy on the communications of top politicians, according to a White House official.
As the Associated Press reports, Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger provided more details about the catastrophic hack, which has reportedly ensnared carriers including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and ISP Lumen Technologies.
Although Neuberger didn’t name the affected telecommunications firms, White House officials said the suspected Chinese hacking campaign affected a few dozen countries and the US—an indicator that the spying effort was far more widespread than previously known.
“White House officials cautioned that the number of telecommunications firms and countries impacted could still grow,” the AP says.
The hack is especially bad since Neuberger said none of the affected firms “have fully removed the Chinese actors from these networks." The spying campaign also began up to two years ago, but the FBI only began investigating the breaches earlier this year.
US officials have said Salt Typhoon primarily focuses on intercepting phone calls from a select group of prominent politicians rather than spying on millions of everyday Americans. Nevertheless, the hackers stole bulk records on who, where, and when people communicated.
To thwart the hackers, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released an advisory this week with instructions on how US telecommunications providers can bolster their cyber defenses. The instructions promise to hinder the hackers and potentially boot the group out of the US network when Salt Typhoon has been spotted using known vulnerabilities, rather than novel techniques, to conduct the hacks. (We recommend checking out our roundup of The Best Private Messaging Apps, too.)
Still, an official with CISA told reporters earlier this week: “Given where we are in discovering the activity, I think it would be impossible for us to predict a timeframe on when we’ll have full eviction.”