China’s spy campaign has collected data on thousands of cellphone users in the United States, sources say.
U.S. officials suspect a newly discovered Chinese hacking and spying campaign scraped data on hundreds of thousands of U.S. cellphone users, likely stealing information on more than a million customers, ABC has learned News.
Sources close to the investigation gave ABC News a detailed look at the broad scope of what U.S. officials call a major intelligence-gathering operation by China, exploiting weaknesses in the communications networks of the world’s largest technology companies. telecommunications of the country.
At a press briefing Tuesday, FBI and Homeland Security cyber officials said the Chinese were capable of stealing a “large amount of data,” officially acknowledging for the first time that China was capable of determining who thousands of mobile phone users were talking to. , when they spoke and where they communicated from.
China initially appeared to have focused on a large group of cellphone users in the National Capital Region. People who briefed ABC News declined to provide figures, but ABC News was able to obtain more detailed information through a number of interviews.
Chinese hackers were then able to focus on the specific communications of a smaller number of important, high-profile Americans and, in some cases, China was able to obtain audio calls from this small group of victims and examine their texts . messages.
ABC News has learned that those targeted included some senior government officials in the Biden administration, with sources telling ABC News that included at least one cabinet secretary and a top White House homeland security adviser.
Although it is not clear to what extent the spying focused on specific targets, sources told ABC News that a number of these senior government officials and prominent U.S. figures were informed that They were potential victims.
ABC News previously reported that President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, some staffers of Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, one of Trump’s defense attorneys, Todd Blanche, and executives of both political campaigns had been targeted.
At Tuesday’s press briefing, officials admitted they could not say with certainty that Chinese hackers had been completely kicked out of those telecommunications networks and acknowledged they were still trying to understand the scope of this activity .
Multiple sources warned that the scope and scale of the operation continued to expand, with one official telling ABC News it was not over.
The investigation found that the Chinese campaign exploited U.S. computer routers serving telecommunications companies, giving them access to the phone numbers of a significant number of Verizon, AT customers.&T, Lumen Technologies and other telecommunications companies.
ABC News previously reported that the operation went unnoticed for several months and may have lasted more than a year.
A recent statement from FBI and Homeland Security officials also revealed that China also had access to some data on certain sensitive warrants pursued by the Justice Department. Sources told ABC News that there was a fear that China would use this data to understand certain people. people who federal authorities investigate and, in some cases, surveil.
Much of Tuesday’s briefing focused on how Chinese hackers compromised the system by exploiting existing fundamental security flaws and confirmed that federal authorities have given industry executives a list of remedies to detect and prevent attacks in progress, as well as recommendations on how to eradicate hackers. .
