The hacking of US telecom infrastructure from China is one of the main topics on the desk of officials. The Wall Street’s report brought the situation to public attention in October. However, the FBI has been investigating it for some time. AT&T and Verizon are two of the carriers affected by the Salt Typhoon attack.
Last week, the US government raised the number of carriers breached during the campaign to nine. Most of the names are secret, but it is confirmed that AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen are on the list. A report from weeks ago suggested that T-Mobile may also have been affected. But the carrier quickly denied this. Later reports even revealed that T-Mobile managed to stop an attempted attack on its network before it came to fruition.
Official statements from AT&T and Verizon regarding the Salt Typhoon hack campaign
In the midst of the Salt Typhoon group attacks, both AT&T and Verizon have issued official statements to try to reassure their customers. Although both admit their networks were compromised, they say they already eliminated the suspicious activity. Starting with Verizon, their statement reads as follows:
“We have not detected threat actor activity in Verizon’s network for some time, and after considerable work addressing this incident, we can report that Verizon has contained the activities associated with this particular incident.”
On the other hand, AT&T says that it detects “no activity by nation-state actors in our networks at this time.” “Based on our current investigation of this attack, the People’s Republic of China targeted a small number of individuals of foreign intelligence interest. In the relatively few instances in which an individual’s information was impacted, we have complied with our notification obligations in cooperation with law enforcement,” the carrier added.
One million customers impacted
A previous report said that the attack had an impact on about one million AT&T and Verizon customers. At the time, the source claimed that most people still hadn’t been properly notified about what happened. Now, both carriers are publicly addressing the incident in an attempt to ease tensions.
