Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called it the "worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far." Chinese hackers called "Salt Tycoon" penetrated every major telecom company and have been able to listen to real-time conversations "exploiting relationships of trust,” Warner told the Washington Post.
“Specifically, we have identified that [Chinese government]-affiliated actors have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies to enable the theft of customer call records data, the compromise of private communications of a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or political activity, and the copying of certain information that was subject to U.S. law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders,” the FBI said in a statement.
On Wednesday, officials from the FBI, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) came to Capitol Hill to brief members on the progress being made in shutting down Salt Tycoon. Some Senators were not pleased after the briefing.
“There’s no accountability in anybody sitting up there,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told reporters. “They have not told us why they didn’t catch it, what they’ve done to prevent it.”
“If somebody came to my office and said, ‘Hey look, something bad happened, don’t worry, I’m responsible for it, but I’m not going to be responsible for it, and I don’t have any plan to fix it,’ what would you do? You’d fire them,” he added.
It appears that the people most responsible for seeing a massive breach like this never happen are trying to keep the extent of the hack from the American people.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Politico the extent of the breach was "breathtaking."
“I think the American people need to know the extent of the breach here, I think they will be shocked at the extent of it,” Hawley said. “I think they need to know about their text messages, their voicemail, their phone calls. It’s very bad, it’s very, very bad, and it is ongoing.”
It's entirely appropriate to ask what the media would have done if Trump had been president. The somnolent response of the press to such an extraordinary event that affects a couple of hundred million Americans needs to be explained.
Even Democrats are up in arms about the lack of transparency. “I think there is huge concern, far and away the worst telecom hack, and the fact is that they are still in the systems,” Warner told reporters.
Officials from CISA and the FBI briefed reporters Tuesday on the latest developments in the investigation, stressing that the agencies are working closely with telecoms groups to respond to the breach. They acknowledged that the scope of the infiltration is still not entirely clear, though they first detected the hack in the spring.
“It’s the most disturbing and widespread incursion into our telecommunications systems in the history of the world, not just the country, because of how massive our telecommunications systems is,” Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told reporters Wednesday. “That’s about as bad as it gets.”
"The big networks are combinations of a whole series of acquisitions, and you have equipment out there that’s so old it’s unpatchable," says Warner. That makes it nearly impossible to deny Salt Tycoon entry into our systems.
"We're going to have to rip out "literally thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of equipment across the country,” specifically outdated routers and switches," Warner said.
As the clock ticks down on both the Biden administration and the 118th Congress, other key priorities like the annual defense and appropriations bills sit higher on the docket. But some lawmakers are already making clear that legislation to secure telecommunications is urgently needed. Warner and other members of Congress are working on a bill to address cybersecurity gaps, and may try to push it through before the end of the year, with Warner telling reporters Wednesday that he is working to “share it with other members” to build support.
The FBI has known about this hack for nearly three months. The fact that the hackers still have access to the systems affected is maddening. Heads should be rolling. Someone has to be responsible.
Don't bet the farm on that happening.
