U.S. telecom networks exposed to Chinese hackers
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What is the Salt Typhoon hacking group and how did they exploit U.S. telecom gaps?
time now for our daily tech and business report. A House committee says Chinese hackers were able to breach several U.S. mobile carriers two years ago due to regulatory gaps. And for more, return to the KCBS Ring Central Newsline to speak with Bloomberg's Kelsey Griffiths. Thanks so much for being with us this afternoon. Thanks for having me. This is a really interesting one. Oh, I'm intrigued. So first of all, tell us about this hacking group known as Salt Typhoon and what kind of gaps they were able to exploit.
We started hearing about salt typhoon activity a couple years ago, back in 2024, when Microsoft identified this sort of ring of nefarious activity and was able to trace it back to China. It's worth noting that China has repeatedly denied involvement, but the U.S.
Which major U.S. carriers were compromised by the Chinese hackers?
still believes that they were able to gain access in an unprecedented way to U.S. telecom networks.
So which U.S. telecommunication companies were hit? We
do know that AT&T, T-Mobile, and Lumen, as well as Verizon, had some signs of activity. AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen all definitely had their networks compromised on some level. T-Mobile told me in an interview that they saw some signs of activity sort of in the lobby of their network, and they were able to boot that traffic out before it was able to capture anything that would have been of interest. It is worth noting that the level of access that the Salt Typhoon bad actors gained was very high profile. There were a couple hundred high profile targets in the D.C. area, including Kamala Harris staffers, President Donald Trump's phone, as well as Vice President J.D. Vance's phone.
How are data centers being used as a hidden entry point for these attacks?
So this was a pretty rich target environment. And it all ties back to these telecom networks. Wow.
How do data centers play on all this?
So this is a new piece of the puzzle that just came out of the China Select Committee in the House. We have been talking for a couple of years about how the carriers are working to boot bad actors from their networks. The U.S. government has cracked down on the amount of Chinese network equipment and even the business activities of Chinese telecom companies in the US to cut down on these risks. But data centers have kind of been this hidden threat that the committee is calling into light. So basically, data centers have functioned on
What actions are the FCC and Congress taking to secure telecom infrastructure?
the edges of commercial networks because they're not a direct to consumer service. Generally, they're more of a business enterprise service and that is not directly regulated by the FCC or any other national government agency. And so this report says that Chinese telecom companies, even though they can't offer retail services in the US anymore, maintained a presence in these enterprise data centers, including having visibility into network traffic, interconnecting with some of these data centers, and potentially being able to monitor some of the traffic that came through those data centers.
Wait, how did they do that? With physical hardware or people or...
Yes, there is physical hardware. There are relationships with, they're called peering relationships, where you basically just have operations inside of a data center. The report describes it as if a fleet of delivery trucks was suddenly told they couldn't do deliveries anymore, but they still left the trucks running. All of the trucks were parked in the driveway or in the garage, and all of the physical pieces of that operation were still in place.
Okay, this sounds really bad.
What information were the hackers targeting within political circles?
What are the next steps for the FCC in terms of keeping the U.S. data safe?
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has said for a long time that data centers and some of these more peripheral enterprise business relationships in the telecom sector are kind of a hidden blind spot. And he has said that it has allowed the Chinese government to do an end run around the FCC's general security processes. So There's an effort right now, both at the FCC and in Congress, to try to expand the FCC's authority so that they don't just regulate the retail services that are available to consumers, but they also have more oversight over some of these enterprise technology operations.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the Salt Typhoon hacking group and how did they exploit U.S. telecom gaps?
0:00–0:47
2
Which major U.S. carriers were compromised by the Chinese hackers?
0:47–1:48
3
How are data centers being used as a hidden entry point for these attacks?
1:48–2:32
4
What actions are the FCC and Congress taking to secure telecom infrastructure?
2:32–3:41
5
What information were the hackers targeting within political circles?
3:41–4:43
6
Who bears legal and financial responsibility for the telecom breaches?
4:43–5:28
Speakers
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