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Chinese intelligence is continuing a massive hack of US telecom networks in a cyber campaign that allows it to access the communications of almost every American, according to a top Democratic senator.
Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee who recently got a briefing on the extensive cyber campaign known as “Salt Typhoon”, said China was still infiltrating the US system.
“I believe they are still inside [our networks],” Warner told a Defense Writers Group event.
Warner said he received a “really frustrating” government briefing with conflicting accounts about the Trump administration’s response to Salt Typhoon.
According to the senator, the FBI said US networks were “pretty clean” despite contradictory evidence from several intelligence agencies.
“Other parts of our community are saying, ‘Hell no, it’s still going on’,” said Warner, who added that he had eight documents from agencies raising concerns about Salt Typhoon which has been ongoing for at least two years.
“It is baffling to me that this is not a bigger issue,” said Warner, who lamented that it might take some kind of “catastrophic event” before the US government became more serious about tackling Salt Typhoon.
Jake Sullivan, who served as national security adviser when Salt Typhoon was discovered during Joe Biden’s administration, told the Financial Times in January that the cyber campaign was unique because of its “sheer scale of access”.
Warner on Friday said the Chinese hackers — who are directed by China’s Ministry of State Security intelligence agency — could access the unencrypted phone communications of almost anyone in the US.
“Unless you’re on an encrypted device, they can pick any one of us,” he said.
Warner said Russia was also trying to take advantage of the vulnerabilities that Salt Typhoon had exposed.
“It should be expected that Russia or Iran or others would look and say, ‘Gosh here are these exploits, America’s done nothing major to close them. Shouldn’t we try as well’,” he said.
The senator said one reason for the sluggish response was that the FBI had reassigned as much as 45 per cent of the agency working on counter-espionage and counterterrorism to work on immigration raids, which he described as “stupidity on steroids”.
While the Biden administration made little progress tackling the issue, the Trump administration has cut the number of professionals in the government who have the expertise to tackle a campaign such as Salt Typhoon.
“The administration has made decisions to reduce the federal effort against cyber security threats that endanger national security,” said Dennis Wilder, a former top CIA China expert. “For example, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has reduced its workforce despite the growing threats to US telecommunications.”
Warner said US telecom networks were more vulnerable than those in Canada and Europe because they were a “hodgepodge of a whole series of networks that have been cobbled together” at a time when the emphasis in the US was to build telecom networks quickly without much attention to the need for cyber security.
The senator, a former telecom industry executive, said he was trying to get support for legislation that would require telecoms companies to adhere to minimum cyber standards but was failing to gain traction because of the cost that would be involved.
Analysts have estimated it would take billions of dollars to rip out and replace the equipment that would have to be upgraded to make the networks more secure from the Chinese hacking.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on its efforts to tackle Salt Typhoon. China has repeatedly denied that the MSS is involved in cyber campaigns against American telecoms networks.
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