Reports first surfaced in October that Salt Typhoon – a group of Chinese hackers – had broken into the networks of AT&T, Verizon, Lumen Technologies and others. Now the telcos say they've been kicked out.
Officials from AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies said that they've managed to eradicate intrusions by Chinese hackers dubbed Salt Typhoon.
"We detect no activity by nation-state actors in our networks at this time," AT&T said in a statement distributed to the media. "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. We will continue to work closely with government officials, other telecommunication companies, and third-party experts on the investigation of this nation-state action, and we are monitoring and remediating our networks to protect our customers' data."
Verizon issued a similar statement: "Verizon has contained the cyber incident brought on by this nation-state threat actor. An independent and highly respected cyber security firm has confirmed the Verizon containment," the company said. "In this incident, a small number of high-profile customers in government and politics were specifically targeted by the threat actor. Those customers have been notified of the activity."
Verizon also released commentary from Vandana Venkatesh, the company's chief legal officer: "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."
And a Lumen Technologies spokesperson said the company has no evidence of Chinese actors in its network. "An independent forensics firm has confirmed Salt Typhoon is no longer in our network. In addition, our federal partners have not shared any information that would suggest otherwise. To date, there is no evidence that customer data was accessed on our network," the company said in a statement.
According to The Register, a top White House official said that a total of nine US telecom firms had been hacked in the Salt Typhoon attack. The official didn't name all the other companies, but T-Mobile officials have said the company was not affected. T-Mobile is the other big US wireless network operator alongside AT&T and Verizon.
Regardless, the hack is being described by some government officials as the worst security breach in US history.
Indeed, officials from CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) and the FBI urged Americans to use encrypted messaging apps, according to TechCrunch, in response to the hack.
"Encryption is your friend; whether it's on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication," said a CISA official during a call with reporters, according to the publication.
News first broke in October that Salt Typhoon – a group of Chinese hackers – was reportedly deep inside the networks of AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies, among others.
Regardless, it appears that Salt Typhoon will stand as just the latest in a long line of nation-backed hacking attacks. For example, the US Department of the Treasury last month alerted lawmakers that Chinese state-backed threat actors were able to compromise its systems and steal data from workstations in December.
Article updated January 2 with direct commentary from a Lumen representative.
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