Dozens of Countries Hit in Chinese Telecom Hacking Campaign, Top US Official Says (msn.com) 41
China-linked spies may still be lurking in U.S. telecommunications networks — but the breach could be much, much wider. In fact, a "couple dozen" countries were hit by the attack, the Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing a top U.S. national security adviser. "Chinese government hackers have compromised telecommunications infrastructure across the globe as part of a massive espionage campaign..."
Speaking during a press briefing Wednesday, Anne Neuberger, President Biden's deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, said the so-called Salt Typhoon campaign is ongoing and that at least eight telecommunications firms in the U.S. had been breached... The Journal previously identified Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Lumen Technologies among the victims... [M]etadata grabs appeared to be "regional" in focus, and were likely a means to identify phone lines of valuable senior government officials, which the hackers then targeted to steal encrypted text messages and listen in on some phone calls, the official said... President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, senior congressional staffers and an array of U.S. security officials were among scores of individuals to have their calls and texts directly targeted, an intelligence-collection coup that likely ensnared their private communications with thousands of Americans, the Journal has reported.
The senior administration official said the global tally of countries victimized was currently believed to be in the "low, couple dozen" but didn't give a precise figure. The global campaign of hacking activity dates back at least a year or two, the official said.
"Neuberger, on the press briefing, said that it wasn't believed that classified communications were accessed in the breaches."
The senior administration official said the global tally of countries victimized was currently believed to be in the "low, couple dozen" but didn't give a precise figure. The global campaign of hacking activity dates back at least a year or two, the official said.
"Neuberger, on the press briefing, said that it wasn't believed that classified communications were accessed in the breaches."
Re: Other countries? (Score:5, Interesting)
Huawei offered full transparency. Even opened up their firmware for review. The US did no such thing.
This was after Snowden, so everybody knew that US equipment was backdoored.
In the end the equipment was replaced. All critical voices were silenced by political pressure.
I do not care that much, but I am rolling my eyes everytime Americans boast that they are the best country in the world.
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I am rolling my eyes everytime Americans boast that they are the best country in the world.
How often does that happen?
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I am rolling my eyes everytime Americans boast that they are the best country in the world.
How often does that happen?
The slogan of the new administration is "Make America Great Again," so the logical conclusion is that they believe America is not great now.
So, apparently, they don't think America is best.
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I am rolling my eyes everytime Americans boast that they are the best country in the world.
How often does that happen?
The slogan of the new administration is "Make America Great Again," so the logical conclusion is that they believe America is not great now.
So, apparently, they don't think America is best.
Your logic doesn't follow. America could be the best and still be in the shitter. That said, I don't think it is the best, but it's up there. [youtube.com]
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Re: Other countries? (Score:5, Insightful)
Huawei offered full transparency.
Unless you compiled your firmware from source code, all you got was a "here's some code, but don't look behind the curtain" fake assurances. The same applies to U.S. firmware, too.
Unless you're running Open Source code on open hardware, you don't know what you're running.
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We can go on forever like this. We end up in the same street. Why do we trust the US and not China? The US has a bit more moral credit, but it is losing it fast. In my opinion? We should have sticked with the Chinese equipment. At least they tried.
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Huawei offer reproduceable builds for firmware. Of course the bootloader could be backdoored.
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And even then, people can insert an exploit earlier in the chain of design and implementation of the information technology in question.
Consider -- anytime npm or other distribution sites for software are compromised.
I remember finding a virus on a BBS shareware CD in 1996. It was using polymorphic code behaviour to be harder to detect. It was detectable, but if I hadn't had the security threat-analysis software I did -- I would've had no idea.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
Talk about perspective bias. (Score:3)
Who mods statements like this up? You're very arrogantly asserting an untruth.
- Hardware is compiled (VHDL, Verilog ).
- A compiler compiler that is malicious can exist and be undetectable. This is a known fact. https://www.usenix.org/confere... [usenix.org]
- Anyone swearing up and down they aren't doing shady shit -- when everyone is aware of the large and damning set of evidence that corroborates them doing shady shit -- is a huge fucking red flag. They think they can get away with security intrusions, by pretendin
Re: Talk about perspective bias. (Score:2)
Oh... attack and deny. That tactic is getting boring.
OMG! (Score:2)
Hacking? (Score:1)
More like deliberately installed backdoors in Hauwei and other chinese supplied kit. I didn't agree with trump about much but restricting Hauwei and other chinese kit inside the telecoms system made sense to me. People seem to forget that in a dictatorship (and yes, china is one) companies have to do what they're told to do otherwise the CEO and his family might suddenly disappear for "retraining", so if they're asked to install these backdoors they'll absolutely do it.
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Re: Hacking? (Score:4, Insightful)
In a dictatorship, yes. In democratic USA, the company gets a National Security Letter and again, installs the backdoor, or else.
Re:Hacking? (Score:5, Interesting)
More like deliberately installed backdoors in Hauwei and other chinese supplied kit.
Do you have something to back that up? Because I was under the impression that Huawei equipment being purged from US networks was one of the signature achievements of the first Trump administration. TFA does not mention 'deliberately installed backdoors in Hauwei and other Chinese supplied kit' being the reason for this hack succeeding and I'd really like a better source on where the hacked equipment was manufactured and the exact entry points and entry methods than somebody's opinion. So far the only juicy detail I've been able to find is claims that Salt Typhoon didn't hack these telecom companies directly they hacked CALEA backdoors that the federal government uses to execute court authorised wiretap requests, backdoors that are been mandated by US law. So to put it bluntly Salt Typhoon seems to have hacked the USA's own legally mandated wiretap system: https://malware.news/t/salt-ty... [malware.news] It makes sense that they would have hacked US wiretapping systems because that would make information gathering an awful lot easier since they would not have had to build their own infrastructure after gaining entry. What's even more interesting is that these hacker not only used AI to plan and execute their attacks, after being ejected from these systems by patches and improved security they apparently actually managed to break back in again.
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What's even more interesting is that these hacker not only used AI to plan and execute their attacks, after being ejected from these systems by patches and improved security they apparently actually managed to break back in again.
Where did it say in TFA that the hackers used AI? I'm all for caution regarding AI, but it's not clear that AI is implicated here. Most compromises are effected with less advanced technology.
"Dear customer. We were unable to deliver your order to the address you supplied. Please click here to reschedule."
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What's even more interesting is that these hacker not only used AI to plan and execute their attacks, after being ejected from these systems by patches and improved security they apparently actually managed to break back in again.
Where did it say in TFA that the hackers used AI? I'm all for caution regarding AI, but it's not clear that AI is implicated here. Most compromises are effected with less advanced technology.
"Dear customer. We were unable to deliver your order to the address you supplied. Please click here to reschedule."
In the article I linked to:
I never said it was in TFA.
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Thanks for the clarification.
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It has nothing to do with Chinese equipment. All equipment used by telcos in the US (and most of the world) is required to have "lawful intercept" capability to make it easy for government agencies to get phone taps put in place. It's a mandated wiretap capability. Hackers have just worked out how to use it themselves. As always, a backdoor that the "good guys" insist on is a backdoor the "bad guys" will have no problem using.
Good thing (Score:3)
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This is a great point.
Apple's petulance about not using RCS E2E mode has become a national security risk.
For their incremental profits.
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RCS doesn't support E2E, so there's nothing about using it.
Google has a proprietary extension to RCS that enables their version of E2E But it requires everything to support it from your endpoints to the gateways in the middle.
Apple only implemented RCS because China mandates that all phones must support it.
If/when RCS adds E2E to their standard and not as a Google controlled proprietary extension, then Apple will likely get i
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RCS is a clusterfuck, because nobody is actually interested in making RCS a good messaging system:
Telcos want to wrestle back control from chat apps, to bring back SMS like tracking/costs.
Google wants a foothold in the chat apps, having completely botched their gtalk strategy years back.
e2ee isn't (yet) part of the spec, so how would apple implementing google's extension help? It seems to require server cooperation, limited to google servers.
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> They need to provide actual proof, or they can just speak to the hand.
The attribution will be whomever the MIC wants to attack next.
Pay attention: this "announcement" happened before the Oreshnik missile but suddenly the Mockingbird Media picked it up after the missile marked the strategic defeat of NATO in its Project Ukraine (read: Project "raid Russia for natural resources").
They want to bomb China in 2027 (and kill your family). Unfortunately for them Tump turned his head so the IRI Coup failed.
Ye
Due to the nature of how it was hacked. (Score:1)
It means that basically all of US intelligence agencies have access to Trump, Vance's etc. phones. Maybe that's why they are so concerned about the deep state.
"it wasn't believed"... (Score:3)
WTF? Deliver proof or shut up. "Belief" is not an useful approach to security.
No 'back door' required (Score:2)
Having worked for a couple of telecom companies, I can tell you that their systems have full visibility into all the metadata, voice, and messaging content that passes through them. Its all just digital data that moves through their intranet, and much of it gets stored routinely. If you can hack in to the company and get to those systems it would not be at all surprising that the data could be accessed. No back door required. Government agencies probably have their own feed to all of this through some dedic
Spot the lie... (Score:1)
The attack has been going on for 1-2 years. Well, the fact they don't know how long it's going on by 100% is awkward.
Many dozen companies were hit. The fact they don't know how many is "many dozen" is awkward.
And then the biggest lie:
> "Neuberger, on the press briefing, said that it wasn't believed that classified communications were accessed in the breaches."
If you don't know how long it's been going on or who was attacked why is it "wouldn't have a belief" that classified communication was breached?
The latest US export (Score:2)
One can be certain the demand to remove possibly back-doored Chinese equipment was also the demand to install definitely back-doored US equipment.
So, when this intrusion was discovered a few months ago, the US also knew its buddies in its surveillance regime were vulnerable and would be next. Similarly, those countries that joined the US surveillance regime, knew their US-made equipment also made them vulnerable.
But, nobody said a word, until now.
Take out all the backdoors then (Score:2)