The move to urge Americans to use end-to-end encrypted apps comes as China-backed gangs are hacking into phone and internet giants.
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AT&T and Verizon reportedly are not notifying most customers whose call records were stolen in the ongoing attack attributed to Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon. NBC News reported today that "the vast majority of people whose call records have been stolen by Chinese hackers have not been notified, according to industry sources, and there is no indication that most affected people will be notified in the near future."
US government officials said last week that major telecom companies have been unable to fully evict the Chinese state-sponsored hackers from their networks. There have been direct notifications to specific targets, such as government officials, whose calls were listened to and whose text messages were accessed. "President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, senior congressional staffers and an array of US security officials were among scores of individuals to have their calls and texts directly targeted," The Wall Street Journal wrote.
For most other victims, the data accessed apparently didn't include the contents of communications. It instead consisted of metadata like the numbers that phones called and when. These people are not receiving notifications from carriers, NBC News wrote today:
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U.S. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden announced a new draft bill with the goal of securing American telephone networks and Americans’ communications in response to the massive hack of telecom providers allegedly done by Chinese government hackers. In a press release on Tuesday, Wyden announced the Secure American Communications Act. The bill would order the Federal […]
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A US government security official urged Americans to use encrypted messaging as major telecom companies struggle to evict Chinese hackers from their networks. The attack has been attributed to a Chinese hacking group called Salt Typhoon.
There have been reports since early October that Chinese government hackers penetrated the networks of telecoms and may have gained access to systems used for court-authorized wiretaps of communications networks. Impacted telcos reportedly include Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Lumen (also known as CenturyLink).
T-Mobile has said its own network wasn't hacked but that it severed a connection it had to a different provider whose network was hacked. Lumen has said it has no evidence that customer data on its network was accessed.
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U.S. government officials urged Americans to use encrypted messaging apps to avoid having their communications tapped by Chinese spies.
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The phone giant said hackers did not access the contents or logs of customer phone calls or text messages, during an industry-wide attack on phone and internet companies.
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