Chinese state-backed cyber espionage group Salt Typhoon, which has been in the news for its breach of U.S. telecom firms, was first discovered on the federal network using a different name, according to Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
“We saw it as a separate campaign called another goofy cyber name. And we were able to—based on the visibility that we had within the federal networks—to be able to connect some dots,” she said during a discussion at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on Jan. 15.
The Salt Typhoon intrusions allegedly exposed a huge swathe of Americans’ call logs to Chinese spies and rattled the U.S. intelligence community. In some cases, hackers are alleged to have intercepted conversations between prominent U.S. politicians and government officials. Some lawmakers have described the intrusions as the worst telecom hacks in U.S. history.
By December, U.S. authorities had discovered that nine American telecommunication companies had been breached by Salt Typhoon; however, the Chinese-state-backed hacking group carried out its espionage campaign likely “one to two years” before being discovered, according to the CISA director.
The earlier identification under a different name enabled officials to connect the dots with the help of tipsters from the private sector, which Easterly said ultimately “led to kind of cracking open the larger Salt Typhoon piece.” […]
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