By Surbhi Misra and David Shepardson
(Reuters) -The China-linked Salt Typhoon cyber espionage operation targeted the systems of AT&T (NYSE:) and Verizon (NYSE:), but the wireless carriers’ U.S. networks are now secure because they work with law enforcement and government officials, the companies they said Saturday in their first acknowledgment of the attacks.
“We are not currently detecting any nation-state actor activity in our networks. Based on our current investigation into this attack, the PRC has targeted a small number of individuals with foreign intelligence interests,” an AT&T spokesperson said.
While only a few cases of compromised information have been identified, AT&T is monitoring and remediating its networks to protect customers’ data and continues to work with authorities to assess and mitigate the threat, the spokesperson said.
“We have not detected threat actor activity on Verizon’s network in some time, and after extensive work to address this incident, we can report that Verizon has contained activity related to this specific incident,” it said Verizon’s Chief Legal Officer said in a statement.
An independent and highly respected cybersecurity firm confirmed the restriction, Verizon said.
On Friday, US officials added a ninth, unnamed telecom company to the list of entities compromised by the Salt Typhoon hackers, saying the Chinese involved gained access to networks and essentially had broad and complete access, giving them the ability were given to “geolocate millions of individuals, to record telephone conversations whenever you want.”
The US Department of Defense and the Federal Communications Commission did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on the company statements. The Chinese Foreign Ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Chinese officials have previously described the allegations as disinformation and said Beijing “strongly combats and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms.”
Officials previously claimed that hackers targeted Verizon AT&T, Lumen and other telecom companies and stole intercepts of phone audio along with a large amount of call data.
In response to this cyberattack, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on December 18 urged senior government and political figures to move mobile communications to end-to-end encrypted apps.
Salt Typhoon’s targets reportedly included officials linked to the presidential campaigns of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.
Senator Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat from New Mexico, called Salt Typhoon the “largest telecommunications hack in the history of our country” during a hearing on December 11, while Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said the US “must address every vulnerability in communications networks close. .”
There are growing concerns about the size and scope of reported Chinese hacking of U.S. telecommunications networks and questions about when companies and the government will be able to inform Americans about it.
