China has reportedly hacked U.S. broadband providers, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
The attack, attributed to the group Salt Typhoon, targeted Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies, formerly called CenturyLink.
The cyberattack may have allowed hackers to access “information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests,” WSJ wrote. Hackers may have “held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful US requests for communications data, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Brandon Wales, former executive director at the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told The Washington Post, “This has all the hallmarks of an espionage campaign — one with potentially deep access to the most important communication companies in the country,” adding, “The impacts are potentially staggering.”
The Post said the hack is “likely aimed in part at discovering the Chinese targets of American surveillance.”
It remains unknown whether the hackers accessed “actual lists of federal surveillance targets or their communications,” according to The Post. “It is also not clear whether the subjects of the surveillance at issue were targeted in domestic criminal investigations or in national security cases, such as espionage, terrorism or cybersecurity.”
The Chinese Embassy has denied claims that the country is involved in the attack. “The US intelligence community and cyber security companies have been secretly collaborating to piece together false evidence and spread disinformation about so-called Chinese government’s support for cyberattacks against the United States,” spokesman Liu Pengyu said.
