PHImage by Mike Segar | Reuters
US officials on Friday said Chinese-affiliated häçkers were able to infiltrate the nation’s commercial telecommunications infrastructure – and now several media outlets are reporting the bad actors may have gotten their hands on the phone records of Trump, JD Vance, and possibly Harris campaign staffers.
With less than two weeks before the US presidential election, the New York Times reported on Friday that a China-affiliated threat actor was discovered targeting communications from phones used by former President Donald Trump and vice presidential running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance.
The latest foreign-threat campaign is said to be “a wide-ranging intelligence-collection effort,” that also is reported to have targeted the communications of democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris' staff, according to Times' sources familiar with the matter.
“The US Government is investigating the unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China (PRC),“ the FBI and US Cybersecurity and Security Infrastructure Agency (CISA) said in a statement released Friday.
It appears the PRC häçkers were able to successfully gain access to Verizon phone systems, after the FBI “identified specific malicious activity targeting the sector,” according to the joint statement.
Cybersecurity insiders have identified Salt Typhoon, a known nation-state adversary and Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group sponsored by the Chinese government, as the possible perpetrators behind the cyber attacks.
In what was described as “an active and highly sensitive national security case,” the Times said the phone numbers of Trump, Vance, and several unnamed individuals (from within the government and beyond), were targeted in the attacks – which could have exposed sensitive text exchanges, caller IDs, and phone numbers, revealing how often and how long those communications took place.
source: https://cybernews.com/security/china-häçks-verizon-telecoms-target-trump-vance-salt-typhoon/
US officials on Friday said Chinese-affiliated häçkers were able to infiltrate the nation’s commercial telecommunications infrastructure – and now several media outlets are reporting the bad actors may have gotten their hands on the phone records of Trump, JD Vance, and possibly Harris campaign staffers.
With less than two weeks before the US presidential election, the New York Times reported on Friday that a China-affiliated threat actor was discovered targeting communications from phones used by former President Donald Trump and vice presidential running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance.
The latest foreign-threat campaign is said to be “a wide-ranging intelligence-collection effort,” that also is reported to have targeted the communications of democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris' staff, according to Times' sources familiar with the matter.
“The US Government is investigating the unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China (PRC),“ the FBI and US Cybersecurity and Security Infrastructure Agency (CISA) said in a statement released Friday.
It appears the PRC häçkers were able to successfully gain access to Verizon phone systems, after the FBI “identified specific malicious activity targeting the sector,” according to the joint statement.
Cybersecurity insiders have identified Salt Typhoon, a known nation-state adversary and Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group sponsored by the Chinese government, as the possible perpetrators behind the cyber attacks.
In what was described as “an active and highly sensitive national security case,” the Times said the phone numbers of Trump, Vance, and several unnamed individuals (from within the government and beyond), were targeted in the attacks – which could have exposed sensitive text exchanges, caller IDs, and phone numbers, revealing how often and how long those communications took place.
source: https://cybernews.com/security/china-häçks-verizon-telecoms-target-trump-vance-salt-typhoon/