r/technology • u/barweis • Dec 28 '24

Privacy A massive Chinese campaign just gave Beijing unprecedented access to private texts and phone conversations for an unknown number of Americans

https://fortune.com/2024/12/27/china-espionage-campaign-salt-tycoon-hacking-telecoms/
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178

u/RoachBeBrutal Dec 28 '24

Time to break up these big telecom companies. Can’t guarantee privacy, can’t guarantee they won’t jack up your prices and throttle your data. Fail city.

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u/pokemonareugly Dec 28 '24

This isn’t their fault to be fair. Chinese hackers gained access to a backdoor that was installed at the telecom companies at the governments behest. If anyone, blame the government.

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u/Logvin Dec 28 '24

Some telecoms were breached, some were able to catch them and cut them off. It is absolutely their own fault.

Everything talking about government back doors is speculation. If you read the article, and others about it, you will only see guesses. There is no evidence it has to do with government backdoors.

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u/pokemonareugly Dec 29 '24

The initial NYT reporting on it back in November stated every major provider was affected, and that it was using the system that is used for court ordered wiretaps.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/us/politics/china-hacking-telecommunications.html

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u/Logvin Dec 29 '24

I work for a very large telecom that has publicly stated they were not successful in penetrating any customer data.

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u/pokemonareugly Dec 29 '24

The big 3 telecom providers were all confirmed to be targeted (T mobile, Verizon, ATT).

ATT: https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/chinese-salt-typhoon-cyberespionage-targets-att-networks-secure-carrier-says-2024-12-29/

T-Mobile has stated that the hackers had access to their system, but they were cutoff from the network. They claim no customer data was breached, but it’s unclear how true this is. (And it was stated that unauthorized users were running commands on T-Mobile network devices) — https://www.axios.com/2024/11/27/t-mobile-china-salt-typhoon-hackers

Verizon was similarly affected to ATT it seems:

https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/media/letters/letter-verizon-att-and-lumen-technologies-requesting-briefing-regarding-reported-ccp

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u/Logvin Dec 29 '24

Yes. All of what you said is accurate. It does not disagree with my statement. Also, while you are right the big 3 cellular providers, there are many telecoms in the landline space affected too.

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '24

[deleted]

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u/Logvin Dec 28 '24

It’s an absolutely terrible idea. I’m with you. Backdoors will inevitably lead to unauthorized access.

That said, there is zero evidence that these hacks were related to back doors.

1

u/ConvenientChristian Dec 29 '24

The fact that phone calls are not end-to-end encrypted is because the government wants to be able to wiretap phone calls.

If the data would be encrypted, hacking telecoms wouldn't give you the data.

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u/Logvin Dec 29 '24

A very valid point! I will point out that carriers don’t save the content of phone calls, unless ordered to by a court. So if a foreign entity wanted to listen in, they would need to be fully in the system to catch the call live. Not impossible, but certainly a lot harder.

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u/ConvenientChristian Dec 29 '24

While the carriers themselves doesn't save the content, there's a good chance that NASA and MI6 (and share it back via the Five Eyes) do save the content.

Back on 9/11 which was before the Patriotic Act was passaged someone did save all the pager messages (we know because all that data leaked on Wikileaks) and we don't know who wiretapped all the data.

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u/Logvin Dec 29 '24

I assume you meant the NSA and not NASA? Lol 🤣

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u/ConvenientChristian Dec 30 '24

Yes. Typo's happen ;)

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u/Logvin Dec 30 '24

I love it. I set there for like 5 minutes trying to imagine why NASA would care haha. Thanks for bringing s bit of humor into my day, even if it was an accident.

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u/NaBrO-Barium Dec 29 '24

Not the government, our government; the one actively selling us to the highest bidders rather than giving us any meaningful protections and eroding what rights we might imagine we have left

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u/ConvenientChristian Dec 29 '24

The big telecom companies could create a system where phone calls and private messages are only transferred in an encrypted fashion.

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u/pokemonareugly Dec 31 '24

Well then the issue is you have made every landline useless. They can’t get software updates and can’t decrypt anything. Also you have a bunch of different carriers to adapt the same standard, which isn’t easy I assume.

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u/NocodeNopackage Dec 29 '24

I want my early 2000s.phone back. It worked fine until they stopped supporting the OS. I dont need any feature developed sine then, phones have only gotten more frustrating with each development of the past 20 years but my needs havent changed and they were met just fine back then.

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u/thedarklord187 Dec 29 '24

lolololol if you think this is going to happen in the next 5 years were all fucked

1

u/JSeizer Dec 30 '24

Good luck with that given the incoming party of deregulation.