Between the months of September and November, T-Mobile fended off a cyberattack potentially linked to the Chinese state-sponsored group called Salt Typhoon. Unlike past incidents, the company successfully prevented any data breaches. But it’s not just the mobile carrier that was targeted.
FCC weighs punishments for US Telecoms
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) revealed that nine U.S. telecom carriers have been compromised so far. Before now, there were eight companies, with Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen included. The ninth identity remains a mystery.
From all indications, the hackers touched SMS and metadata from millions of Americans, and even targeted high-ranking officials and presidential candidates, such as Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and JD Vance.
In response to the latest hacker attacks aimed at mobile carriers, the U.S. government has advised citizens to use encrypted telecom services for added security. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering penalties for carriers failing to secure their networks and is also evaluating a potential ban on China Telecom operations in the country. Meanwhile, China has denied involvement, asserting its opposition to all forms of cyber attacks.
It’s not like anyone expects China to come out and say, “yeah, that was us.” Denial is the default play in situations like these, especially when accusations involve state-sponsored cyber espionage. But it’s scary how Salt Typhoon has been this persistent.
Although they didn’t get access to the classified information they targeted, they didn’t walk away empty handed. They managed to swipe a large amount of data from millions of Americans. It’s enough to aid them in tracking and analyzing communication patterns.
FCC pushes for stronger cybersecurity
It’s unclear how long it will take to completely remove Salt Typhoon from the affected systems. Senator Ben Ray Luján said their attack is the biggest ever on US phone companies. He said the country needs to fix any weak spots in its networks to stop this from happening again.
Anne Neuberger, a national security official, pointed out that the FCC is working on a rule that will require telecom companies to submit their cybersecurity practices every year, with the risk of fines if they don’t comply. She also made a suggestion that companies should separate their networks into segmentations so that if attackers gain access, they can be contained to one part of the network, limiting damage.
We know that voluntary cybersecurity practices are inadequate to protect against China, Russia, and Iran hacking of our critical infrastructure. That is why the FCC launched their notice of a public rule. They’re waiting for all FCC commissioners to vote on that rule by January 15th, and we really are eager to have the bipartisan support across the FCC to ensure that telecom companies must put in place those basic cybersecurity practices that would make it harder, riskier, and costlier for the Chinese to compromise those networks in the future.
Anne Neuberger, Deputy National Security Advisor of the United States.
Neuberger mentioned an example where a telecom company had a single administrator account that could control over 100,000 routers, and when this account was compromised, the hackers gained widespread access to the entire network. She warned that the full extent of the breach may never be fully understood because the hackers erased their activities and some companies didn’t have proper records to track what happened.
