China’s spokespeople keep denying claims by U.S. officials, but U.S. officials have not retracted or backed off at all on their claims about Chinese espionage and cyberattacks. The Wall Street Journal reports:
The message from President Biden’s national security adviser was startling.
Chinese hackers had gained the ability to shut down dozens of U.S. ports, power grids and other infrastructure targets at will, Jake Sullivan told telecommunications and technology executives at a secret meeting at the White House in the fall of 2023, according to people familiar with it. The attack could threaten lives, and the government needed the companies’ help to root out the intruders.
What no one at the briefing knew, including Sullivan: China’s hackers were already working their way deep inside U.S. telecom networks, too.
In the telecom attacks, the hackers exploited unpatched network devices from Fortinet and compromised large network routers from Cisco.
That granted them access to more than 100,000 routers from which they could further their attack—a serious lapse that may have allowed the hackers to copy traffic back to China and delete their own digital tracks.
The router hijacking took place within AT&T’s networks, a person familiar with the matter said.
AT&T declined to comment on the router attack. Cisco and Fortinet declined to comment.
In December, Neuberger said the number of U.S. telecom victims had grown to nine, and that there could be more.
In addition to deep intrusions into AT&T and Verizon, hackers pierced other networks belonging to Lumen Technologies and T-Mobile. The Chinese hackers also reached into Charter Communications, Consolidated Communications and Windstream, according to people familiar with the matter.
Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
