China’s Salt Typhoon cyber espionage targets AT&T, but networks are safe, Reuters reports
Author: Surbhi Misra
(Reuters) – The China-linked Salt Typhoon cyberespionage operation targeted AT&T (NYSE: ) systems, but the U.S. wireless carrier’s networks are now secure because it is cooperating with police and government officials, the company said on Saturday in its at the first confirmation of the attack.
“At this time, we are not detecting any nation-state actor activity on our networks. Based on our current investigation of this attack, the People’s Republic of China targeted a small number of individuals of interest to foreign intelligence services,” an AT&T spokesperson said.
While only a few instances of compromised information have been identified, AT&T has been monitoring and repairing its networks to protect customer data and continues to work with authorities to assess and mitigate the threat, a spokesperson said.
On Friday, US officials added a ninth unnamed telecom company to the list of entities compromised by the Salt Typhoon hackers and said the Chinese involved gained access to the networks and essentially had broad and complete access, giving them the ability to “geolocate millions of individuals, record phone calls as desired.”
The US Department of Defense and the Federal Communications Commission did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment outside regular business hours. China’s foreign ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.
Officials previously said the hackers targeted Verizon (NYSE: ), AT&T, Lumen and other telecommunications companies, stealing wiretaps along with large amounts of call data.
In response to that cyberattack, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on December 18 urged senior government and political figures to switch mobile communications to end-to-end encrypted applications.
Reportedly, the targets of the salty typhoon included officials associated with the presidential campaigns of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.
Chinese officials have previously described the allegations as disinformation and said Beijing “firmly opposes and fights against cyber-attacks and cyber-theft in all forms”.
There is growing concern over the size and scope of reported Chinese hacking of US telecommunications networks and questions about when companies and the government will be able to reassure Americans about the problem.
