Lily Hay Newman
US intelligence and law enforcement agencies are scrambling to contain the fallout from a far-reaching Chinese espionage campaign into US telecoms. That includes the Department of Defense; in a letter to the DOD inspector general on Wednesday, senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Eric Schmitt of Missouri are calling on the Pentagon to investigate its own “failure to secure its unclassified telephone communications from foreign espionage.”
The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed publicly on November 13 that the China-linked hacking group known as Salt Typhoon has been embedded in major United States telecom companies for more than a year, running a sophisticated espionage operation that has reportedly targeted high-profile targets like president-elect Donald Trump and his campaign officials as well as subjects of interest on the US Justice Department’s “lawful intercept” wiretap list. Target companies include Verizon and AT&T along with a slew of other domestic and international telecoms; US officials have been investigating the situation since the spring.
CISA and FBI officials told reporters on Tuesday that telecom companies are still working to expel Salt Typhoon hackers from their networks and that the US government is actively helping victims clean house while also assisting them in hardening their defenses to prevent new compromise. But government departments like the DOD are also customers of those telecoms—and were themselves exposed.
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