The US believes an alleged widespread Chinese cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon targeted and recorded telephone calls of “very senior” US political figures, a White House official said on Saturday.
New details of the campaign were revealed by US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Annie Neuberger to reporters at the Manama Dialogue regional security conference in the Bahraini capital.
While the metadata of a large number of Americans may have been stolen, U.S. officials said “the purpose of the operation was more focused,” Neuberger said.
“We believe … the actual number of calls they took, recorded and took were more focused on very senior political figures,” she continued.
He did not provide details, including the identity of those targeted.
Chinese officials have previously described the allegations as misinformation and said Beijing “resolutely opposes and fights all forms of cyber attacks and cyber theft.”
“We are still investigating the scope and scale of the hacking campaign”, Neuberger said.
In October, the New York Times reported that family members of US President-elect Donald Trump and Biden administration officials were targeted by China-linked hackers who infiltrated telecommunications companies.
A senior U.S. official said this week that dozens of companies around the world, including at least eight U.S. telecommunications and telecommunications infrastructure firms, have been attacked by hackers.
U.S. officials have alleged that the hackers’ targets included Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Lumen, and others, and that telephone audio interceptions and large portions of call record data were stolen.