The federal government began investigating a major Chinese breach of global telecommunications systems in the spring, officials said Tuesday, and warned that the intrusion is “ongoing” and likely larger in scale than previously understood.
The hack was first announced publicly in October and has been attributed by U.S. agencies to a Chinese government-linked hacking group known as Salt Typhoon. The effort targeted dozens of telecom companies in the U.S. and globally to gain access to U.S. political leaders and national security data.
The timeline of the hacking effort, as well as the scope of the intrusion, was not previously disclosed.
Jeff Greene, executive assistant director of cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and a senior FBI official said Tuesday that while agencies started cooperating on their investigations of Salt Typhoon’s activities in early October, the effort was first detected in “late spring and early summer.” He also warned that the breach is “ongoing” and that there was much law enforcement still did not know.