US security agencies believe a Chinese hacking group, called Salt Typhoon, likely attacked major companies. These include Digital Realty, a big data center company, and Comcast, a large internet provider.
The National Security Agency (NSA) thinks Comcast was hit by Salt Typhoon. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) listed Digital Realty as possibly affected. People who know about this shared the information, but they want to stay unnamed because it’s a sensitive topic.
Salt Typhoon was already known for breaking into major telecom companies around the world. That was found out last year. This new information suggests the hackers might have even deeper access to the internet’s core systems.
Officials are not totally sure who all was affected by Salt Typhoon. Different US government agencies have lists of victims, but these lists might not match up. This makes it harder to know the full picture.
It’s also tough to investigate because some phone companies have used legal ways to avoid saying they were hacked. Some even told their staff not to look for signs of Salt Typhoon.
CISA should have contacted Digital Realty and Comcast since December if they were likely victims. It’s not clear if they’ve had steady talks. CISA usually reaches out when they think a network is hacked.
A hack into Comcast or Digital Realty could be a big national security risk. Comcast helps millions of people and businesses get online. Digital Realty holds a lot of the physical gear that phone companies, cloud services, and governments use to send internet traffic around the world.
CISA and the NSA did not comment on this. The FBI did not reply. Comcast and Digital Realty also did not respond to requests for comment.
Marc Rogers, an expert in telecom cybersecurity, said this confirms what many in the field already thought. He believes the Salt Typhoon attacks were bigger than just phone companies and that the hackers might still be inside these systems.
Rogers also pointed out that many of these hacks used simple, old flaws, like vulnerabilities from 2018. He said we should focus on why we aren’t fixing these old problems in our important internet systems.
An attack on data centers like Digital Realty could let hackers see traffic that doesn’t usually go over the public internet. This could include data moving within cloud services or between hosted systems and on-site networks. This kind of traffic might not be as protected.
Digital Realty has over 300 data centers globally. Companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia are some of its clients.
Senator Josh Hawley recently said that the hackers are still in telecom systems. He said US officials were told that foreign actors likely have full access to our calls and messages.
Past Salt Typhoon hacks targeted calls and texts of US officials, including President Trump. The hackers got into systems used to get call data for law enforcement.
A spokesperson for the House China Select Committee said this shows China’s efforts to get into our digital systems. They said it’s urgent to make our defenses stronger.
Other lawmakers have also expressed concern and are looking into how the government handled these hacks.
