US Lawmakers Seek Answers From Telcos Over China Hack

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the US House of Representatives has asked telecoms companies AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies to answer questions about a hack of their broadband systems that allegedly involved China-linked attackers.

The hack, reported by the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, 5 October, involved a number of broadband systems the federal government uses for court-authorised network wiretapping requests.

The paper reported that China-linked hackers may have had access to the networks for months, and may also have accessed other tranches of internet traffic.

The three companies were amongst those involved in the hack, the paper said.

Intelligence hack

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, along with Representatives Frank Pallone, Bob Latta and Doris Matsui said they are seeking a briefing and detailed answers from the firms by this Friday.

They are seeking details on what information was accessed and when the companies learned there had been an attack.

It was unclear when the attack occurred.

“There is a growing concern regarding the cybersecurity vulnerabilities embedded in US telecommunications networks,” the congresspeople said.

The Journal said the attack was carried out by a Chinese government-linked hacking group designated “Salt Typhoon”, with the aim of collecting intelligence.

China’s foreign ministry responded at the time that it was not aware of the attack described in the report but said the United States had “concocted a false narrative” to “frame” China in the past, Reuters reported.

The incident is one of a long string of alleged hacking incidents reported on both sides that have escalated along with the economic and military rivalry between China and the US.

Last month the FBI defeated an attempt by state-sponsored hackers linked to China who had tried to fight back against the US takedown of their 260,000-device botnet.

State-sponsored groups

At the time the US Justice Department announced a court-authorised law enforcement operation that disrupted a botnet consisting of more than 200,000 consumer devices in the United States and worldwide.

The FBI said that the botnet devices were infected by PRC state-sponsored hackers working for Integrity Technology Group, a company based in Beijing, and known to the private sector as “Flax Typhoon”.

The FBI said the botnet malware had infected numerous types of consumer devices, including small-office/home-office (SOHO) routers, internet protocol (IP) cameras, digital video recorders (DVRs), and network-attached storage (NAS) devices.

Earlier in October the US and Microsoft disrupted a spear-phishing campaign being carried out by a unit of the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, or a criminal group linked to the service.