Three months later the reports came out about a cyberattack, dubbed Salt Typhoon, targeting US internet service providers and wiretapping infrastructure, two of the largest telecom companies said they had made progress in securing their networks against the threat .
AT&T and Verizon each released statements over the weekend responding to the Salt Typhoon for the first time since working with federal law enforcement and other entities. AT&T said in its statement that, based on its investigation, China is targeting “a small number of individuals of foreign intelligence interest” and that the company is working to protect customer data.
Meanwhile, Verizon said it “contains a cyber incident caused by this nation-state threat actor” and that it “has not detected threat actor activity” on its network for some time. It added that a third-party security firm confirmed the detention.
In late September and early October, reports first described the Salt Typhoon attacks, leading the FBI to warn that certain types of messaging, such as RCS texting between iOS and Android phones, may be in danger.
It now appears that Salt Typhoon turned out to be a more targeted attack than previously believed, though hundreds of millions of customers may have had their data and personal information at risk.
“In this incident, a small number of high-profile government and political customers were specifically targeted by the threat actor,” Verizon said in its statement. “Those customers have been notified of the activity.”
Both Verizon and AT&T said they have partnered with government and law enforcement agencies, telecommunications industry partners and private cybersecurity firms.
“In the relatively few instances where an individual's information was affected, we were able to comply with our notification obligations,” AT&T said.
Over the weekend, a ninth company was affected by the hack said recognizedbut the White House did not release the company's name.
T-Mobile reiterated on Monday that it was not one of the nine identified by the government, determining a blog post from late November.
