Chinese hackers compromised eight American telecommunications companies as part of a wide-ranging espionage effort to gather intelligence about prominent U.S. citizens, Biden administration officials said Wednesday.
Anne Neuberger, deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said that the Chinese group known as Salt Typhoon continues to linger inside some networks as security personnel work to eject the hackers. President Joe Biden has received multiple briefings on the matter as the U.S. government seeks to investigate, she said.
The update comes after officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Tuesday that it would be impossible for them to predict how long it would take to clear the intruders from compromised networks. The White House also has established a unified coordination group that meets on a daily basis to help address the threat, they said.
China has repeatedly denied U.S. accusations of its involvement.
Neuberger didn’t identify the companies affected by the months-long hacking campaign. AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are among those breached, and the hackers potentially accessed systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests, the Wall Street Journal reported in early October.
T-Mobile U.S. Inc. Chief Security Officer Jeff Simon told Bloomberg News last week that the company had detected a breach that was potentially related to Salt Typhoon. Simon took part in a Nov. 22 meeting with telecommunications industry executives and White House officials to address the network intrusions, as did the CEOs of AT&T and Lumen Technologies Inc.
U.S. Telecom, the trade group representing broadband providers, said in a statement to Bloomberg News that its members would “continue to work side-by-side with intelligence agencies and law enforcement to identify and address the root causes of cybersecurity incidents.”
Salt Typhoon has collected intelligence and targeted phones belonging to President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, among others. The attackers also spied on communications belonging to what the FBI has said is a “limited number” of people in government and politics.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Wednesday joined officials from the White House, FBI and other agencies to brief U.S. senators in a classified closed-door meeting.
Following the briefing, Senator Marco Rubio described the hacking campaign as “the most disturbing and widespread incursion” into the country’s telecommunications systems.
“It’s about as bad as it gets,” said Rubio, a Florida Republican nominated by Trump as the next U.S. secretary of state.
Separately, two U.S. senators demanded Wednesday that the Defense Department conduct an internal investigation into its contracts with phone companies. Senators Ron Wyden and Eric Schmitt said that the telecom providers networks used by the Pentagon could be vulnerable to foreign surveillance.
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