China’s Salt Typhoon cyber espionage targets AT&T, Verizon, but networks are safe, carriers say

By Surbhi Misra and David Shepardson

(Reuters) – The China-linked Salt Typhoon cyber espionage operation targeted the systems of AT&T and Verizon, but the U.S. wireless carriers’ networks are now secure because they are working with law enforcement and government officials, the companies said on Saturday in the first their finding of attacks. .

“We do not detect any state actor activity on our networks at this time. Based on our current investigation into this attack, the People’s Republic of China has targeted a small number of individuals of foreign intelligence interest,” a spokesperson for AT&T.

While only a few instances of compromised information have been identified, AT&T is monitoring and remediating its networks to protect customer data and continues to work with authorities to assess and mitigate the threat, the spokesperson said.

“We have not detected the activity of threat actors on the Verizon network for some time, and after considerable work to address this incident, we can report that Verizon has contained the activities associated with this particular incident,” Verizon’s chief legal officer said in a statement .

A highly respected independent cybersecurity firm confirmed the limitation, Verizon said.

On Friday, US officials added a new unnamed telecommunications company to the list of entities compromised by the Salt Typhoon hackers and said the Chinese involved gained access to the networks and essentially had broad and complete access, giving them the ability to “geolocate millions of people, to record phone calls at will”.

The US Department of Defense and the Federal Communications Commission did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on the company’s statements. China’s foreign ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

Chinese officials have previously described the allegations as misinformation and said Beijing “firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms”.

Officials previously said hackers targeted Verizon AT&T, Lumen and other telecommunications companies and stole wiretaps along with a large chunk of call recording data.

In response to this cyberattack, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on December 18 called on government and political figures to move mobile communications to end-to-end encrypted applications.

Salt Typhoon’s targets reportedly included officials connected to the presidential campaigns of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat from New Mexico, called Typhoon Salt “the largest telecommunications hack in our nation’s history” during a Dec. 11 hearing, while Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said the US “must plug any vulnerabilities in communications networks”. .”

There is growing concern about the size and scope of the reported Chinese attack on US telecommunications networks and questions about when companies and the government will be able to reassure Americans about the issue.

(Reporting by Surbhi Misra and Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Raju Gopalakrishnan)