Athira Sethu
Kochi, 14 November 2024
US officials said on Wednesday that hackers linked to China had been able to view surveillance information meant for American law enforcement. Hackers broke into the computer networks of multiple telecom companies and siphoned off American customers’ call records, as well as the communications of a tiny subset of people who were involved in government or political activities.
The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a joint statement in this regard. The hackers targeted information that was part of law enforcement investigations authorized by court orders, the statement said. But that was as far as it went, and neither CISA nor the FBI would comment further on the matter when asked.
This comes from a few report releases earlier, one of which was the Wall Street Journal sources, that resulted in the inference that Chinese hackers might have accessed the systems used by U.S. authorities in screening telephone calls and communications illegally. Such reports had been highly alarming and had particular concerns concerning America’s telecommunications network, especially in view of the fact that hackers targeted the phones of several political figures, including Donald Trump and JD Vance, in addition to other senior officials.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Safety Review Board will investigate the breach to learn how it occurred and what impact it might have on national security. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not comment on this issue, reports said.
