U.S. Telecom Giants Contain Salt Typhoon Cyberespionage Attack

American telecom companies AT&T and Verizon have confirmed they have been targeted by the Chinese government-linked group Salt Typhoon and announced their networks are currently safe.

According to Reuters, the companies have been working with government officials and law enforcement to avert the attack, announced by the FBI and CISA a few weeks ago.

“We detect no activity by nation-state actors in our networks at this time. Based on our current investigation of this attack, the People’s Republic of China targeted a small number of individuals of foreign intelligence interest,” said a spokesperson from AT&T.

Only a few cases of sensitive information have been compromised and the companies continue to work on security measures and strategies to mitigate the consequences of the cyber espionage campaign. The hackers were seeking to steal data and access customer call records, especially from American politicians.

The U.S. government confirmed on Friday that nine telecom companies had been targeted but didn’t disclose the names of all nine. Only Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile USA Inc. acknowledged publicly the malicious campaign and the security measures taken. Officials previously mentioned other companies targeted, such as Lumen.

“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,” said Verizon’s Chief Legal Officer in a statement.

The Chinese government, on the other hand, has denied any participation in the attacks. Other Chinese hacking groups such as Earth Estries, have also been targeting telecom companies in other regions.