The Washington Post took time out of its busy schedule of helping owner Jeff Bezos’ business by avoiding conflict with Donald Trump and examined the networks of at least three major U.S. carriers.
The US intelligence community briefed six current or former senior US officials about the attack. The Chinese hackers believed to be linked to Beijing's Ministry of State Security, have infiltrated the private wiretapping and surveillance system that American telecom companies built exclusively for US federal law enforcement agencies.
The US government believes the hackers likely still have access to the system. Since the breach was first detected in August, the US government and the telecom companies involved have said very little publicly, leaving the public to rely on details trickling out through leaks.
The lawful-access system breached by the Salt Typhoon hackers was established by telecom carriers after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It allows federal law enforcement officials to execute legal warrants for records of Americans' phone activity or to wiretap them in real-time, depending on the warrant.
Many of these cases are authorised under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which investigates foreign spying involving contact with US citizens. The system is also used for legal wiretaps related to domestic crimes.
It is unknown whether hackers accessed records about classified wiretapping operations, which could compromise federal criminal investigations and U.S. intelligence operations worldwide. However, multiple officials confirmed that hackers could listen in on phone calls and monitor text messages.
"Right now, China can listen to any phone call in the United States, whether you are the president or a regular Joe, it makes no difference," one of the hack victims briefed by the FBI told the columnist.
"This has compromised the entire telecommunications infrastructure of this country."
The Wall Street Journal first reported on October 5 that China-based hackers had penetrated the networks of US telecom providers and might have infiltrated the system telecom companies operate to allow lawful access to wiretapping capabilities by federal agencies.
After releasing a short statement, the FBI notified 40 victims of Salt Typhoon, according to multiple officials. The FBI informed one compromised person that the initial group of identified targets included six affiliated with the Trump campaign and that the hackers had been monitoring them as recently as last week. "They had live audio from the president, JD, and Jared," the person told the columnist. "There were no device compromises. These were all real-time interceptions." The duration of the surveillance is believed to date back to last year.
Several officials noted that the cyberattack targeted senior U.S. government officials and top business leaders, with more compromised targets being discovered.
"Multiple officials briefed by the investigators told me the U.S. government does not know how many people were targeted, how many were actively surveilled, how long the Chinese hackers have been in the system, or how to get them out."
US Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Mark Warner said, "It is much more serious and much worse than even what you all presume at this point."
One US representative suggested Americans rely more on encrypted apps, although that will go down like a lead balloon with US spooks who don’t want the riff-raff to be using encrypted apps because they can’t spy on them.
