China used three private companies to hack global telecoms, U.S. says

To date, three private Chinese companies have helped China carry out one of the most daring hacking operations, in particular hoping for text messages from the campaigns of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, according to a coalition of American agencies and 12 allied governments.

The operation, known as Typhoon de Salt, hacked telecommunications companies around the world, notably AT&T and Verizon last year, allowing it to potentially access textual and telephone communications between millions of people and follow their locations.

A 37-page technical report published on Wednesday was signed by the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as Australian, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom intelligence and application organizations, among others. He said that the campaign, which has been taking place since 2021, also targeted government, transport, accommodation and military infrastructure networks around the world.

An FBI spokesperson said in a statement sent by email that Salt Typhoon had hacked more than 200 companies in 80 countries.

NBC News reported in July that the Ministry of Defense had discreetly concluded this year that Salt Typhoon also penetrated at least one state -of -the -state network for almost a year before its detection.

The three companies that have helped the Chinese States Security Ministry in the campaign are Huanyu Tianqiong information technology, technology of the Sichuan Zhixin Ruijie network and Sichuan Juxinhe network technology.

While the Treasury Department sanctioned the technology of the Sichuan network of Sichuan on the activity of the Salphon of Salt in January, Western governments had not previously accused the other companies in global hacking operations.

Little information on companies is available online, and they could not be attached to comment. A spokesperson for the China Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comments. The Chinese government has denied participation in hacking activities abroad and accused the United States and its similar behavior allies.

It is remarkable that the three companies seemed to be companies that operated, and not only fronts for Chinese information, said Dakota Cary, Chinese analyst of the Cybersecurity Sentinelona company.

“Which means the MSS [Ministry of State Security] Used effectively, three private companies working in collaboration to achieve some of the most important collection objectives on the planet, “Cary told NBC News.

“It is inconceivable that the United States would ask a private company to hack Xi”, “ He added, referring to the Chinese president XI Jinping.

Although Salt Typhoon does not exclusively hack telecommunications companies, he proved to be remarkably able to do so. Its Piracy of AT&T and Verizon alone gave China access to telephone data on more than a million people in the Washington, DC, DC,.

This type of access gives intelligence agencies the potential not only to spy on telephone calls and SMS, but also to follow people’s locations, according to the report.

“The data stole this activity against foreign telecommunications and Internet service providers (ISP), as well as intrusions in the accommodation and transport sectors, can ultimately provide Chinese intelligence services with the ability to identify and follow the communications and movements of their targets in the world,” he said.

AT&T and Verizon said they had removed the pirates from their systems, although they remain vulnerable to be penetrated again.