US officials believe Chinese hackers breached at least eight US telecommunications providers in order to spy on top US political figures as part of a global hacking campaign, a White House official said Wednesday.
“Right now, we do not think any of them have fully scrubbed these networks of Chinese actors…” “There is a chance that communications will continue to be broken,” Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser, told reporters.
It is the most detailed public estimate yet from the Biden administration of the size of a hacking campaign that has scared the US national security establishment and is set to pose a challenge to the Trump administration. Neuberger said that officials do not think the hackers got to any classified information.
Senior US intelligence officials gave senators a secret briefing on the Chinese hacking campaign on Wednesday, at the same time Neuberger spoke.
CNN has reported that the alleged Chinese hackers have listened in on the phone calls of high-level US politicians like President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, as well as high-level Biden administration officials.
China has said they are not involved.
Officials from the US said Tuesday that they still do not have a time frame for when they will be able to help major telecom companies get Chinese government-backed hackers off of their networks.
FBI and CISA officials say that the telecom companies that have worked with the government the longest are the ones that are most advanced in getting rid of the hackers. CNN previously reported that hackers are going after major phone companies like Verizon and AT&T.
A senior FBI official said that the investigation into the Chinese hacking began in late spring or early summer of this year. This was the most detailed update from the FBI on the spying campaign so far.
He said that the hackers took “a lot” of bulk phone records that show where, when, and with whom people were talking, but not what they were saying on the calls or texts.
The hackers were also able to read the text messages and calls of a “limited number” of people in the US government or politics, the official said.
It was also said that the hackers “copied some information that could be requested by US law enforcement pursuant to court orders.” A government official said that the hackers were not mostly interested in the part of telecom companies that lets police do court-ordered wiretaps.
