Chinese hackers attempt to breach US telecommunications.

Cyber espionage operation 'Salt Typhoon' targeting AT&T and Verizon

The China-linked cyber espionage operation 'Salt Typhoon' was aimed at telecommunications companies AT&T and Verizon, but the companies are secure as they cooperate with law enforcement and government officials.

According to Reuters, officials previously claimed that hackers targeted Verizon AT&T, Lumen, and other telecommunications companies and stole intercepted phone audio recordings along with a large amount of call data, reports Ekonomichna Pravda.

In response to this cyberattack, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on December 18 urged senior government and political officials to shift mobile communications to end-to-end encrypted applications.

Reportedly, the targets of the hackers were officials associated with the presidential campaigns of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

'Currently, we do not detect any state activity in our networks. Based on our current investigation of this attack, the PRC has targeted a small number of individuals of interest to foreign intelligence,' said an AT&T representative.

Despite only a few instances of information leakage being detected, AT&T is monitoring and restoring its networks to protect customer data and continues to cooperate with authorities to assess and mitigate the threat, the company representative stated.

Verizon stated that they have not detected malicious activity in their network and reported that after significant work, they contained activities related to the incident, according to a statement from Verizon's legal affairs director.

On Friday, US officials added a ninth unnamed telecommunications company to the list of organizations compromised by Chinese hackers and stated that those involved had gained access to the networks and essentially had wide and complete access, allowing them to 'geolocate millions of people, record phone calls at will.'

Chinese officials previously labeled these accusations as misinformation and stated that Beijing 'resolutely opposes and fights against cyberattacks and cyber thefts in all forms.'