The attack — which took place in October — led to Chinese hackers breaching multiple companies including AT&T, Verizon and possibly T-Mobile as well. Their goal was to access information on U.S. government officials and they specifically targeted the phones of president elect Donald Trump and vice president elect JD Vance.
In addition the hackers were able to tap into the cellphone lines of some politicians and government workers. They got access to text messages, call logs and bits of call audio from the hacked cellphone lines.
Since the discovery of this group the telecom companies have been working with security officials to expel the intruders from their networks. Jeff Greene — who works for the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency — said that the hackers were altering their tactics whenever the media talked about what U.S. officials knew. This makes it very likely that the current report we have is either outdated or missing pieces of the puzzle.
T-Mobile claims it was not breached by Chinese hackers. | Image credit — Bloomberg
If telecom companies and security agencies know how deep into the system these hackers are then they’re staying quiet about it. Greene says they’re still working on figuring that out which may be untrue because they don’t want to reveal that they have the upper hand.
