U.S. alleges China hacked calls of 'very senior' political figures, official says By Reuters

By Alexander Cornwell

MANAMA, Bahrain (Reuters) – The United States believes a massive Chinese cyberespionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon targeted and recorded phone calls from “very high-ranking” U.S. political figures, a senior government official said on Saturday. the White House.

Comments by Anne Neuberger, U.S. deputy national security adviser for cybersecurity and emerging technologies, to reporters at the Manama Dialogue regional security conference in the Bahraini capital revealed new details about the campaign.

Although a lot of U.S. metadata was likely stolen, U.S. officials understand that “the goal of the operation was more targeted,” Neuberger said.

“We believe that the actual number of calls that they received, recorded and took were actually more focused on high-ranking political figures,” she continued.

She did not give details, including revealing the identity of the people targeted.

Chinese officials have previously dismissed the claims as disinformation and said Beijing “firmly opposes and combats cyberattacks and cybertheft in all forms.”

“We are still investigating the scope and scale” of the hacking campaign, Neuberger said.

THE New York Times (NYSE:) reported in October that members of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's family and Biden administration officials were among those targeted by China-linked hackers who broke into businesses in telecommunications.

A senior U.S. official said this week that dozens of companies around the world had been hit by the hackers, including at least eight telecommunications and telecommunications infrastructure companies in the United States.

U.S. officials alleged that the hackers' targets included Verizon (NYSE:), AT&T (NYSE:), T-Mobile, Lumen and others and that telephone audio interceptions as well as much of the recording data of the calls had been stolen.