Fbi Says China’s Salt Typhoon Hacked At Least 200 Us Companies

A Chinese-backed hacking run that previously hacked into 9 U.S. telecommunication and net providers is now confirmed to person hacked astatine slightest 200 American companies, according to nan FBI’s apical cyber chief.

FBI Assistant Director Brett Leatherman told The Washington Post that nan hackers, dubbed Salt Typhoon, besides broke into companies successful 80 countries, revealing for nan first clip nan world standard of nan Chinese spying campaign.

Leatherman didn’t sanction nan hacked companies. AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen were antecedently confirmed arsenic breached, and Charter Communications and Windstream were later named arsenic victims, among others.

The hackers targeted telephone records among elder American politicians and officials, allowing them to representation retired who was calling whom, and connected whom nan U.S. was snooping pinch ineligible orders. For a time, nan threat was truthful terrible that nan FBI urged Americans to move to encrypted messaging apps to debar having their calls and messages accessed.

The FBI, on pinch astir 2 twelve world agencies, said in an advisory [PDF] published Wednesday that Salt Typhoon chiefly targets institution routers and siphons delicate web traffic, and offered method guidance connected really to place intrusions.

Leatherman told nan Post that nan threat from China is “ongoing.”