Wall Street reported on Saturday that Chinese hackers were able to compromise U.S. internet services provider vendors like Verizon, AT&T and Lumen Technology to gain access to information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping.
The act seems to have been going on for a while, and the hackers had access to the service providers’ infrastructure that supports the federal government with data related to any judicial proceeding or court-authorized wiretapping.
According to the researchers, the attack was carried out by a Chinese hacking group with the intent of collecting intelligence. U.S. investigators have dubbed it “Salt Typhoon”. Earlier this year, the U.S. thwarted a major Chinese hacking operation known as ‘Flax Typhoon,’ following previous warnings to China about its extensive cyber espionage activities and after confronting Beijing over its ‘Volt Typhoon’ campaign.
The service providers Verizon and AT&T have not released any statements on the matter, and the Chinese officials have also not responded to accusations of any involvement with the breach.
The service providers need to be more cognizant about their systems security postures and improve their infrastructure monitoring so as to protect the sensitive data that the malicious actors are always hunting. Any loophole, if left unattended by the service providers, would not be spared for a second by the hackers before taking advantage of the situation.
