Salt Typhoon still reverberating
Salt Typhoon impacted major carriers including AT&T, Charter Communications, Consolidated Communications, Lumen Technologies, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Windstream. But law enforcement and intelligence agencies caution that its impact is far more widespread, exposing at least 200 US organizations, plus entities in 80 other countries.
According to federal investigations, the attack allowed the Chinese government to record phone calls, geolocate millions of individuals, and target specific individuals including the US president and vice president. The group initially exploited the routers of telecom providers, using the devices and trusted connections to move into other networks and, among other actions, access information on wiretap systems used by federal law enforcement.
Salt Typhoon is “one of the worst cyberattacks in history,” said US Senator Maria Cantwell, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, who strongly opposed the ruling’s reversal.
