Amid an unprecedented cyberattack on telecommunications providers such as AT&T and Verizon, US officials have advised Americans to utilize encrypted messaging apps to keep their communications safe from foreign hackers.
The hacking attack, dubbed Salt Typhoon by Microsoft, is one of the most significant intelligence breaches in US history, and it has yet to be entirely remediated. Officials attending a press conference Tuesday declined to set a deadline for certifying the country’s telecommunications systems free of interlopers. Officials told NBC News that China hacked AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies to snoop on their consumers.
A representative for the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return a request for comment.Officials Warn of Cyber Risks, Recommend Encrypted Messaging to Avoid Foreign Interception
In the call Tuesday, two officials — a senior FBI official who requested anonymity and Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — both advised Americans to use encrypted messaging apps to reduce the likelihood of China intercepting their communications.
“Our proposal, which we have already told people internally, is not new: Encryption is your buddy, whether it’s for text messaging or encrypted audio conversation. Even if the opponent is able to intercept the data, encryption makes this difficult, according to Greene.
The hackers accessed three categories of material, according to an FBI officer.
Call records, also known as metadata, show the phone numbers that were called and when. The hackers targeted records in the Washington, D.C. area, and the FBI has no plans to notify those whose phone metadata was downloaded.
The second type involved live phone calls to selected targets. The FBI official declined to say how many alerts it had sent to campaign targets; however, the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, as well as the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., informed NBC News in October that they had been targeted.
The third category includes technology used by telecommunications firms in accordance with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement organizations (CALEA), which permits law enforcement and intelligence organizations to track people’s communications under court orders. CALEA systems may incorporate classified court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles some US intelligence court orders. The FBI officer declined to clarify whether any classified information was accessed.
Privacy activists have long called for end-to-end encrypted apps. Signal and WhatsApp automatically use end-to-end encryption in both calls and messages. Google Messages and iMessage may also fully encrypt calls and texts.
