Nine U.S. telecom firms have been hacked as part of a Chinese-linked hacking campaign dubbed Salt Typhoon as of Friday, top White House official Anne Neuberger said.
What happened: Earlier this month, Biden’s leadership said at least eight telecommunications companies had been affected by the hacking campaign. However, a ninth company was attacked, Neuberger, deputy U. S. national counsel for cybersecurity and emerging technologies, said Friday, without disclosing the company’s decision.
According to officials, the hackers accessed the personal communications of an unknown number of Americans as part of the campaign. A large number of those affected are in the Washington, Virginia, area, Neuberger said Friday.
“The purpose was to identify who those phones belong to and whether they were targets of government interest for espionage and intelligence gathering on communications, text messages and phone calls on those specific phones,” he said.
China, however, has previously denied responsibility for the hacking.
Why It Matters: “We wouldn’t leave our homes, our offices unlocked, and yet our critical infrastructure — the private companies owning and operating our critical infrastructure often do not have the basic cybersecurity practices in place that would make our infrastructure riskier, costlier, and harder for countries and criminals to attack,” Neuberger said, while calling for defensible infrastructure.
Voluntary cybersecurity practices, Neuberger said, are inadequate to counter hacking efforts by China, Russia and Iran.
The FCC has issued a public rule stating that telecommunications companies have fundamental cybersecurity practices in place. He now expects all commissioners to vote on the rule by Jan. 15.
“We’re actually waiting for bipartisanship on the FCC to make sure that telecommunications companies have to implement those fundamental cybersecurity practices that would make it more difficult, more risky, and more expensive for the Chinese to compromise those networks in the future. ” Neuberger said. Friday.
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