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From the Wall Street Journal: A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests.
For months or longer, the hackers might have held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful U.S. requests for communications data, according to people familiar with the matter, which amounts to a major national security risk. The attackers also had access to other tranches of more generic internet traffic, they said.
Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies are among the companies whose networks were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the people said.
The widespread compromise is considered a potentially catastrophic security breach and was carried out by a sophisticated Chinese hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon. It appeared to be geared toward intelligence collection, the people said.
The surveillance systems believed to be at issue are used to cooperate with requests for domestic information related to criminal and national security investigations, the report explains.
The alarming breech was just discovered in “recent weeks,” and investigators are still working to determine how serious it was and what information the hackers may have obtained. The attack has been described as ” historically significant and worrisome,” according to a person familiar with the situation.
Below is one chilling excerpt from the WSJ report:
More recently officials have been alarmed by alleged efforts by Chinese intelligence officers to burrow into vulnerable U.S. critical infrastructure networks, such as water-treatment facilities, power stations and airports. They say the efforts appear to be an attempt by hackers to position themselves in such a way that they could activate disruptive cyberattacks in the event of a major conflict with the U.S.
Brandon Wales, former executive director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and now a vice president at SentinelOne, warned, “It will take time to unravel how bad this is, but in the meantime it’s the most significant in a long string of wake-up calls that show how the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has stepped up their cyber game. If companies and governments weren’t taking this seriously before, they absolutely need to now.”
CATASTROPHIC: Chinese hackers massively wiretapped 🇺🇸USA by compromising the interception portals mandated under US law.
Remember this the next time a government demands encryption backdoors.
By: @bysarahkrouse @dnvolz @aviswanatha @bobmcmillan h/t @RonDeibert
READ:… pic.twitter.com/vamrQ2xA61
— John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) October 5, 2024
EXCLUSIVE: A China-linked cyberattack breached major broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems used for U.S. wiretaps https://t.co/HXfPWM9jCP https://t.co/HXfPWM9jCP
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 5, 2024
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