More telcos confirm China Salt Typhoon security breaches as White House weighs in AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies confirmed that Chinese government-backed snoops accessed portions of their systems earlier this year, while the White House added another, yet-unnamed telecommunications company to the list of those breached by Salt Typhoon. The digital intrusion, which has been called the "worst telecom …
I sent this article on to our Public Information Officer as an example of "clever" language. Like you Beast I immediately caught the non-committal language of "at this time" and I actually kind of agree with it. I suspect they don't actually know for sure if they have kicked the Chinese out or not. --MuleD
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"The Chinese gained access to networks, essentially had broad and full access.
With that kind is access , there is 99.9‰ chance that there are several back doors, quietly listening in the background.
The 1st will be relatively easy to find , the others a lot less so..
It would be interesting to see how the TLAs will handle this if it is one of their ilk that is being tracked.
If you gain access to a system with that much power, it would make sense to add some more backdoors into the system so once the one you used is found and closed down then the next one can be spun up.
With access to 100000 routers that would be easy to do - even the best config management systems will have a lot of work to identify the malicious changes…
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Quote: "...the spies broke into an admin account..."
Quote: "... booted the Chinese attackers out of its systems..."
Really? Petabyte data volumes! Millions of LEGITIMATE users logged in.
How can anyone say with certainty that "there are no bad actors in our systems"?
As I recall it, the Equifax hack is known to have lasted anything from three months to years. No one knows how much data was exfiltrated.
Why should anyone believe these events are any different?
The value isn’t so much in tracking all those users, it’s the insight data at that scale can give you. Given someone’s work mobile you can find their personal mobile (they’re physically located in the same place lots of the time), their kids’ mobiles etc.
Ofc they may well have had access to “wiretapping” functionality which is a mandated function telcos must have to support TCNs/whatever the Yanks call them. Again, listening to me and thee chat **** about the footy isn’t super interesting, but with that scale of access they’re likely to find *someone* they’re interested in nosing into.
tl;dr - it’s bad. Like, really bad.
The Telcos will be all over this, doing everything they can that doesn't cost a cent or doesn't come with government funding. Any attempts by the FCC to mandate security standards or penalties for breaches will either be blocked by Trusk or locked up in the courts for years with the Telcos and states crying "government overreach.'"
This is what happened with the water companies earlier this year. No reason to think that the situation will be any different with the telcos.
"The EPA has tried to push hardened security mandates onto water operators, but the agency in October rescinded a memorandum that would have directed providers to evaluate the cyber defenses of their water systems when conducting sanitation surveys. The measure, which the agency said was permissible under the Safe Water Drinking Act, faced legal pushback from GOP-led states and trade groups."
From
https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/05/more-70-surveyed-water-systems-failed-meet-epa-cyber-standards/396727/]
“Ah, the timing! Always so impeccable, isn’t it? One can’t help but notice the dance of narratives—the outgoing administration, the incoming one, the telecom giants claiming victimhood while skirting accountability. It’s almost theatrical! The specter of foreign snoops infiltrating critical systems is undoubtedly chilling, but why does this curtain rise now? Convenient, isn’t it, for agendas to flourish amidst chaos? One wonders who’s orchestrating the tune and to what end.”
[quote]
"We detect no activity by nation-state actors in our networks at this time," an AT&T spokesperson said. ...
[\quote]
Unimpressed.
Presumably they also detected no activity by nation-state actors (nor indeed by anyone else) in their networks earlier in the year. While it was happening.
Why don't you give an option 'No Plans" or similar in your questionaires?
If you don't give the option of "No, not relevant" etc then the stats from those surveys are useless.
Why not start the new year and do things properly?
And No, we are not going to use AI in any security related field. It can't be trusted. One day perhaps but now? Forget it... just like Tesla Full Self Driving.
When AI systems can handle the multitude of 'What If's' related to security breaches then I might change my mind.
"Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched a public rule proposal requiring basic cybersecurity practices for telecom carriers."
I am losing hope that there is anyone in charge that actually has a clue about technology in general. Do they really think the 9 Telcos that were breached are not currently spending billions and employ some of the best cybersecurity talent money can buy? These are fortune 100 companies that already adhere to NIST, and CISA and a dozen other standards these dolts in DC have never heard of. It's like they think we need to buy more bullets to counter an enemy with a plasma weapon. We need a different strategy not "more" of what got us to this place.
"Do they really think the 9 Telcos that were breached are not currently spending billions and employ some of the best cybersecurity talent money can buy?"
Forget what they think and look instead on what they - and we - know. that in spite of all the spending and employment the telcos were required to provide back doors for the good guys to monitor communications based on the magical thinking that the bad guts would be unable to find and use them.
Oh, big whoo.
Millions more people use apps on smartphones that report back all manner of information including location, charge status, device model and spec, carrier in use, and so on.
For example: MX Player reports all of this, and more, constantly to Facebook and Unity. A video editor that I use reports it all to AppLovin. Everything reports use and other metrics back to Google. [*] These are for adverts and in-app purchases. I'm quite sure many other apps report to many other services. So it isn't at all out of the realms of possibility for vast numbers of devices to be happily sending data to Beijing all by themselves. After all, they're already sending it all to California... Why are we expected to trust them and not the Chinese?
* - Install the DuckDuckGo fake VPN that blocks trackers in apps. You'll be surprised by two things - firstly how many there are, and secondly how they don't expect to be blocked so they'll keep retrying hundreds, then thousands, of times even when the app is supposed to be in the background. I think a lot of this "run at startup" shit, that is completely unnecessary for most apps, only happens to allow them to call home. And since one of the major guilty parties here is the one who makes the phone OS, your options to do anything about it (without rooting the device) are extremely limited.
Why would I worry about China hacking me. What is China going to do to me?
Meanwhile it's fine for much more local entities to constantly hack everything about my life. If we get that under any sort of control then as a bonus it also makes it that much harder for entities on the other side of the planet such as China.
...you can be sure that at least one government has a back door to your system and can geolocate you, if only on behalf of the other 'five eyes' and their chums. Surveillance as a service.
The Chinese are likely to want to locate dissidents, especially from Hong Kong, which the HK puppet govt. is putting out bounties on. The USG only really care about govt. folks, most of whom may still be clicking on attachments in e-mails hoping for free pron.
I wonder, with President Musk in charge in the Orange House, if America will follow its War on Drugs (didn't work, some now legalised) and War on Terror (didn't work, Afghanistan handed to the Taliban on a plate) with a War on Bots.
Odds are even that TMo claimed to have repelled some attackers just to claim a bit of good security PR for a change (they have no POTS lines). Meanwhile, Lumen, owner of Sprint's old POTS biz surely is in the list. I'll worry quite a bit more if Cogent ends up being named, as you've pondered...
