White House holds emergency meeting with telecoms over ‘massive’ Chinese breach

THE WHITE HOUSE HELD an emergency meeting on Friday with senior telecommunications industry officials to discuss the fallout from a Chinese cyber espionage operation described as “massive” by experts. The existence of the operation was revealed last month by Microsoft engineers, who claimed that it was orchestrated by Salt Typhoon, a Chinese government-linked hacker group. On Thursday, following a briefing provided by intelligence officials, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), who chairs the United States Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, referred to the Chinese breach as “far and away the most serious telecom hack in [American] history”. Warner added that the volume of data the Chinese hackers were able to collect on “important American officials” was alarming, but that the extent of the intrusion was significantly broader than initially thought and compromised the privacy of telephone users across the United States. According to reports, the breach affected a host of American telecommunications service providers (TSPs), including the three largest —T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T.

The initial breach compromised the system employed by the TSPs to facilitate communications interception requests by government agencies following the issuance of court warrants. Eventually, however, the hackers were able to exploit antiquated software and hardware in the United States’ national telecommunications network in order to target a wide array of users. The extent of the damage caused by the breach remains unknown, as very little about it has been shared by the White House or the telecommunications industry. Nevertheless, it appears that the hackers selected telephone service users with senior current or former posts in government, including President-Elect Donald Trump. The hackers were reportedly able to access the metadata, and even content, of all unencrypted telephone calls and text messages to and from these users.

Friday’s meeting at the White House was reportedly convened by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and co-led by Anne Neuberger, who is serving as Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technology. The names of telecommunications industry executives that attended the closed-door meeting were not provided to the media.

Joseph Fitsanakis
https://intelnews.org/2024/11/25/01-3373/