Tyler Cross
Published on: December 10, 2024
US officials are warning citizens to avoid unsecured texting and instructing them to rely on encrypted texts and messages amidst a devastating series of attacks on telecom companies.
AT&T, Lumen Technologies, and Verizon, three US telecom giants, were hacked in October as part of the hacking campaign dubbed Salt Tycoon. US officials immediately warned people to avoid texting.
The hackers obtained data including live phone calls, text messages, dates texts were sent, when a phone call was made, and more. They also obtained systems that were shared with law enforcement agencies to make them Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) compliant.
According to experts, China hacked these companies to spy on its customers. The attack strategies closely matched other methods used by Chinese operatives. Two months later, the situation has not been remediated and the government has issued another warning.
The FBI has responded to the incident and an investigation is already underway.
“We see this as a cyberespionage campaign, not dissimilar to any other approaches. Certainly, the way they went about it was very, very specific about the telcos and the ISPs, but it fits into the cyberespionage bucket,” they explain.
During a news conference last Tuesday, multiple officials refused to give a timetable for fixing the problem. When asked, they explained that the scope of the Salt Tycoon campaign was so grand that it was currently impossible to give an accurate timetable.
Jeff Greene and an anonymous individual recommended that citizens use encrypted messaging apps to communicate safely.
“Our suggestion, what we have told folks internally, is not new here: Encryption is your friend, whether it’s on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication,” Greene states. “Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible.”
