"Salt Cyclone"... Updates on the largest Chinese espionage operation targeting 80 countries

Arab Sea Newspaper - Special

Arab Sea - X platform The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) revealed that Chinese spies targeted more than 80 countries in the "Salt Typhoon" hack, confirming that the campaign also affected about 600 companies and went beyond traditional espionage. According to new details revealed by the Wall Street Journal, the campaign, which lasted for years and hit U.S. telecommunications companies and swept up Donald Trump's phone calls, reached around the world, and to a much greater extent than investigators initially understood. The "Salt Typhoon" campaign dates back to at least 2019, but U.S. authorities did not discover it until last year. This campaign allowed actors linked to China to access U.S. customer call data, private communications of a limited number of individuals, sensitive information about law enforcement agencies, and technical information about networks, which could contribute to future attacks. Brett Leatherman, the FBI's chief cyber security officer, said the scope of the hack allowed Chinese intelligence officers to monitor the private communications of U.S. citizens and track their movements around the world. The agency estimates that hackers likely obtained more than one million call records and targeted the phone calls and text messages of more than 100 Americans. He added, "This is one of the most serious cyber espionage violations we have seen here in the United States." The hackers also managed to access information from systems used by the federal government for court-authorized wiretap requests, one aspect of the hack that particularly worried U.S. officials. Leatherman said, "This should be a wake-up call for all Americans." He added, "If you can extract similar information globally, you can start to aggregate that data and start to understand a completely different intelligence picture than you would if you just targeted one country and attacked it." The networks operated by major wireless carriers in the United States were among those that were hacked, according to the Wall Street Journal. Verizon Communications announced earlier this year that a "state-affiliated threat actor" had breached its network as part of a broader attack and that it had been able to contain the incident. Late last year, AT&T stated that "the People's Republic of China targeted a limited number of individuals of foreign intelligence interest" and that it adhered to its notification obligations in the few cases where information was affected. T-Mobile USA also announced late last year that it had detected attempts to hack its systems by actors, and a spokeswoman said in a statement that its defenses "worked effectively to prevent any access or leakage of customer information or sensitive information." The FBI informed about 600 companies that the espionage activity showed interest in them for reasons including their business relationships and vulnerabilities in their networks. In some countries, telecommunications networks have been hacked to varying degrees, while in others, the extent of access remains unclear. U.S. officials described the hack as a devastating and well-executed espionage operation by Beijing, and investigators now believe the activity was broader and more indiscriminate than previously thought, and goes beyond what countries typically understand as espionage, according to Leatherman. He added that this activity may have allowed Chinese spies to use geolocation data from mobile phones to track the movements of Americans, including outside the country.