The US government is investigating a major breach of global telecommunications systems from a Chinese government-linked hacking group called Salt Typhoon, according to a report by Politico.
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Officials have warned this is “ongoing” and most likely larger in scale than previously thought, according to the report which added that this was first announced publicly in October after it was detected in late spring and early summer.
Among those affected include President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, in both cases before the election.
The victims to the hack include mostly political or government-linked individuals present in the “Capital Region,” impacted by stolen call records from telecom companies.
The hacking effort targeted as many as 80 telecommunications companies and internet service providers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in the US to gain access to political leaders’ and national security data.
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The report quoted Jeff Greene, executive assistant director of cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and a senior FBI official as urging Americans to use encrypted communications wherever possible.
This comes after the CISA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and partner agencies in New Zealand, Australia and Canada jointly released an alert warning of the same on Tuesday.
However, the UK was the only nation in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group which did not sign on to the alert.
Apart from this, the Chinese hackers had also accessed and copied US court orders, which the FBI official said were attained through the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement statute program.
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