Chinese hackers ran amok in US telecom network for 18 months — got info on over 1 million people: report

China-linked hackers reportedly managed to sneak into a US telecommunications surveillance system network for 18 months undetected and amass data on over 1 million people, with the full extent of their shenanigans still unknown.

Beginning around mid-2023, nefarious cyberintruders who are part of a hacking group known as Salt Typhoon — which has ties to Chinese intelligence — penetrated Verizon, AT&T and systems used for court-backed surveillance, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The latter systems reportedly entailed individuals whom the US government suspected of being agents for China.

Without specifying which company, the report claimed that the hackers got into one US telecommunications network for 18 months and into another company’s network for six months.

During that time, hackers targeted calls and phone lines tied to President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, Vice President Kamala Harris as well as individuals in their orbit.

Of particular focus for the hackers were telecommunications coming out of Washington, DC and in all they were able to get their hands on a trove of IP addresses, phone numbers and more from over 1 million people, according to the report.

“[This was] worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far,” an unnamed senator vented to The Washington Post last year about the hack.

Alarmingly, after the cybercriminals were identified, they modified their tactics, which made locating and thwarting them more complicated, per the Wall Street Journal.

They reportedly still remained burrowed in some of the companies’ wiretap systems as recently as October, even after the public learned about the intrusion.

During their time inside the networks, the intruders attempted to mimic systems engineers and then mask their activities in order to blend in. But authorities were eventually able to observe the hackers pass pilfered data around the world before pulling it into China.

“We saw a massive set of data acquired,” an FBI official told the outlet.

Chinese officials have denied culpability.

“Some in the US seem to be enthusiastic about creating various types of ‘typhoons,’” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington told the outlet.

“The US needs to stop its own cyberattacks against other countries and refrain from using cybersecurity to smear and slander China.”

Meanwhile, AT&T insists that there currently is no evidence to suggest that foreign actors have penetrated its network, while Verizon claims that it “has contained the activities associated with this particular incident.”

National security experts seem less convinced, and some reportedly feel that the scope of the breach is so advanced that the US might never be able to be certain that the hackers have been expelled.

Key US officials have begun shifting away from traditional calls and texts in favor of encrypted lines from private apps like Signal as a means of protecting themselves from similar attacks.

To overcome cyber defenses, the Chinese-linked hackers exploited aging US telecom equipment

“It’s shocking how exposed we are, and still are.” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R. Alaska) bemoaned during a Senate hearing last month, calling a briefing he received on the attack “breathtaking.”

Last month, Treasury Department officials informed Congress that a China state-backed actor successfully breached some of its workstations and got ahold of “unclassified” documents.

Previously, China was thought to have been largely fixated on gaining US trade secrets to give it an economic edge. But the more recent breaches have underscored how the Chinese Communist Party appears keen on using cyberwarfare to gain an edge in the geopolitical domain.

In the fall of 2023, key US officials scrambled to stave off a Chinese-backed attack that got into critical infrastructure and gave it the ability to potentially turn off power grids and potentially tamper with US ports.

Eventually, government officials were able to flag some of the breached systems and neutralize some of the malicious software.