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09-12-2024
MANAMA/ BEIJING/ WASHINGTON: The US believes that an alleged sweeping Chinese cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon targeted and recorded telephone calls of “very senior” American political figures, a White House official said on Saturday.
The comments by Anne Neuberger, the US deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, to reporters at the Manama Dialogue regional security conference in Bahrain’s capital revealed new details of the campaign.
While a large number of Americans’ metadata likely has been stolen, US officials understand that “the purpose of the operation was more focused,” Neuberger said.
“We believe … the actual number of calls that they took, recorded and took, was really more focused on very senior political individuals,” she continued.
She did not elaborate, including revealing the identities of those who were targeted.
Chinese officials previously have described the allegations as disinformation and said that Beijing “firmly opposes and combats cyber-attacks and cyber theft in all forms.”
“We’re still investigating the scope and scale” of the hacking campaign, Neuberger said.
The New York Times in October reported that members of US President-elect Donald Trump’s family and Biden administration officials were among those targeted by China-linked hackers who broke into telecommunications companies.
A senior US official this week said dozens of companies worldwide have been struck by the hackers, including at least eight telecommunications and telecom infrastructure firms in the US.
US officials have alleged the hackers’ targets included Verizon(VZ.N), opens new tab, AT&T(T.N), opens new tab, T-Mobile(TMUS.O), opens new tab, Lumen(LUMN.N), opens new tab, and others and that telephone audio intercepts along with a large tranche of call record data were stolen.
Meanwhile, Members of former US President Donald Trump’s family and officials from the Biden administration were among those targeted by China-linked hackers who were able to break into Telecommunications Company systems, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The Times said State Department officials, Trump family members including Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, and prominent Democrats including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer were among those targeted by the spies.
Concerns about the hacking group have grown since media reports disclosed its activities last month.
On Oct. 6, the Wall Street Journal reported that the group, nicknamed “Salt Typhoon”, had accessed the networks of broadband providers and obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping.
The State Department, as well as aides for Trump family members, did not immediately respond to media’s questions. The White House, the National Security Agency, and the cybersecurity watchdog agency CISA did not immediately return messages. A Schumer aide did not immediately reply to an email. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an email, although Beijing routinely denies being behind cyberespionage campaigns.
US government agencies held a classified briefing for all senators on Wednesday on China’s alleged efforts known as Salt Typhoon to burrow deep into American telecommunications companies and steal data about US calls. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
