Salt Hurricane, a hacker group believed to be related to China’s Ministry of State Safety, has reportedly been inside US networks for months and it nonetheless hasn’t been expelled.
A brand new NBC Information report says that AT&T and Verizon, two corporations that had been hit the toughest by the hack, have solely alerted prospects whose name and textual content content material was eavesdropped on. These prospects constituted a comparatively small variety of victims, the overwhelming majority of whom had their metadata stolen.
Salt Hurricane hackers accessed metadata for over 1,000,000 individuals, most within the Washington, D.C., space. Metadata is the info collected about telephone calls and messages, such because the numbers of the individuals, timing, and site info.
Metadata does not include dialog content material and does not tie numbers to prospects, however it may be beneficial info for intelligence providers who already know targets’ numbers. They’ll use the knowledge to acquire somebody’s journey routes and work out how completely different individuals are related.
The FBI is placing no stress on AT&T and Verizon to inform prospects whose metadata was accessed, and the 2 are unlikely to take action.
The suppliers and/or the carriers, no matter time period we wish to use, would actually have the accountability to inform their prospects of the stolen data. That might not usually fall to CISA or the FBI.
FBI official. December 2024
Outstanding US residents, significantly politicians and authorities officers, are stated to be the principle goal of the Salt Hurricane. The group reportedly accessed methods the federal government makes use of for lawful wiretapping requests. The campaigns of President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance are amongst these focused.
