According to the FBI's top cyber chief, the Chinese hacking campaign, which previously hacked by nine US telecommunications and internet providers, has been confirmed to have hacked at least 200 American companies.
FBI assistant director Brett Leatherman told the Washington Post that hackers called Salt Timone have also invaded businesses in 80 countries, revealing the first global Chinese spy campaign.
Leatherman did not name the hacked company. AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen have previously been identified as violations, while Charter Communication and Windstream were later designated as victims.
Hackers targeted call records among senior American politicians and officials, allowing them to map who was calling who, and who the US had sn-searched on legal orders. For a while, the threat has been so serious that the FBI urged Americans to switch to encrypted messaging apps to prevent calls and messages from being accessed.
The FBI, along with almost 20 international organizations, states in its advisory [PDF] Salt Typhoon announced Wednesday that it will primarily target company routers and suck-sensitive network traffic and provide technical guidance on how to identify intrusions.
Leatherman told the Post that the threat from China was “ongoing.”