Massive telecommunications hack of the US carried out by China

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altmin

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Hackers for the Chinese government were able to deeply penetrate U.S. telecommunications infrastructure in ways that President Joe Biden’s administration hasn’t yet acknowledged, according to new reports from the Washington Post and New York Times. The hackers were able to listen to phone calls and read text messages, reportedly exploiting the system U.S. authorities use to wiretap Americans in criminal cases. The worst part? The networks are still compromised and it may take incredibly drastic measures to boot them from U.S. systems.


The hackers behind the infiltration of U.S. telecom infrastructure are known to Western intelligence agencies as Salt Typhoon, and this particular breach of U.S. equipment was first reported in early October by the Wall Street Journal. But Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, spoke with the Washington Post and New York Times this week to warn the public that this is so much worse than we initially thought, dubbing it “the worst telecom hack in our nation’s history.” And those articles based on Warner’s warnings were published late Thursday.

Warner is chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and a former venture capitalist who bet big on telecom in the 1980s and 90s, making him uniquely qualified to talk about threats to U.S. communications infrastructure. And he says it’s really bad. “My hair’s on fire,” Warner told the Post.

Hackers weren’t able to monitor or intercept anything encrypted, according to the Times, which means that conversations over apps like Signal and Apple’s iMessage were probably protected. But end-to-end encryption over texts between Apple devices and Android devices, for instance, aren’t encrypted in the same way, meaning they were vulnerable to interception by Salt Typhoon, according to the Times.
 
I have a very close friend who works high up in cyber security for uncle sam. He's says its just a matter of time before we are crippled because we are too care more with spending hundreds of billions building planes and ships instead of spending on keeping the best IT minds. Huge govt contracts rules the USA.
 
I have a very close friend who works high up in cyber security for uncle sam. He's says its just a matter of time before we are crippled because we are too care more with spending hundreds of billions building planes and ships instead of spending on keeping the best IT minds. Huge govt contracts rules the USA.
If he's high up in cyber security, he really shouldn't be talking to you like this.
 
Almost like having the intelligence apparatus build back doors to spy on Americans was a mistake.
 
Hes not sharing anything that requires any clearance, Einstein
He shouldn't be sharing anything. People don't need to know that a cyber security specialist high up in the government thinks our cyber defenses are garbage. That's valuable information. Maybe anyone who would value this information already knows it, but it's still not something that should be blabbed around.
 
Almost like having the intelligence apparatus build back doors to spy on Americans was a mistake.
This breach has nothing to do with that. This is an aging infrastructure problem, and it's hardware based.
 
This breach has nothing to do with that. This is an aging infrastructure problem, and it's hardware based.
My bad. Should’ve read the article before commenting based on this: “The hackers were able to listen to phone calls and read text messages, reportedly exploiting the system U.S. authorities use to wiretap Americans in criminal cases.”
 
My bad. Should’ve read the article before commenting based on this: “The hackers were able to listen to phone calls and read text messages, reportedly exploiting the system U.S. authorities use to wiretap Americans in criminal cases.”
Yes, a system that has been around for a very long time. Our telephone infrastructure is leaky because it is old.
 
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