On Wednesday, U.S. phone company T-Mobile said that hackers had “no access” to its users’ calls, text messages, and voicemails during a cyberattack that is affecting internet and phone companies across the board.
Jeff Simon, T-Mobile’s chief security officer, said in a statement that the company had seen “attempts to infiltrate our systems” in the past few weeks. Simon said that the attacks came from another telecoms company that was tied to T-Mobile’s network. No name was given to that company.
Simon said, “We quickly cut off access to the provider’s network because we think it was hacked and may still be,”
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the China-backed hacking group Salt Typhoon had broken into T-Mobile and several other telecom giants, such as AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen. This was part of a larger operation to spy on the communications of U.S. officials, senior Americans, and even presidential candidates.
T-Mobile said on Wednesday that it couldn’t say for sure who the hackers were, but that “we do not see these or other attackers in our systems at this time.” The company didn’t say for sure that its systems had not been broken into before, but it did say that its security measures prevented the hackers “from accessing sensitive customer information.”
Parhlo World asked T-Mobile about metadata about customer phone calls and text messages. The spokesperson said that the dates and times of conversations, as well as information about the caller, sender, and recipient, were not looked at because they are “sensitive” customer records.
“Our technical tools are strong, and they include logs that help us find threats and activity on our systems.” “This kind of telemetry helped us quickly spot suspicious activity and take steps to keep our customers and systems safe,” said Michelle Jacob, a spokesperson for T-Mobile.
T-Mobile said it had spent money on improving cybersecurity over the past few years, in large part because of the many data breaches that put the personal information of millions of T-Mobile users at risk.
In a public warning last week, the FBI and the U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA said that hackers with ties to China were going after telcos as part of a “broad and significant cyber espionage campaign” to get at wiretap systems, which are required by law for U.S. phone and internet companies to install.
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As part of a larger plan by China to get ready for disruptive cyberattacks in case of a future conflict with the US, like an expected Chinese invasion of Taiwan, senior U.S. officials have linked the Salt Typhoon operation against telcos to this plan.
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