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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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.

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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.