Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems used by the federal government for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies are among the telecom companies whose networks were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The Journal said the hackers may have had access for months to the network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized U.S. requests for communications data. It said hackers had also gained access to other parts of internet traffic.
China’s Foreign Ministry responded on Sunday that it had no knowledge of the attack described in the report, but said the United States had “fabricated a false story” to “trap” China in the past.
“At a time when cyber security has become a common challenge for all countries around the world, this wrong approach hinders international efforts to jointly address the challenge only through dialogue and cooperation,” the ministry said in a statement to Reuters. “Will hinder the efforts of the community.”
Beijing has previously denied claims by the US government and others that it has used hackers to break into foreign computer systems.
Lumen Technologies declined to comment, while Verizon and AT&T did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Journal said the attack was carried out by a Chinese hacking group for the purpose of gathering intelligence. American investigators have dubbed it a “salt typhoon”.
Earlier this year, U.S. law enforcement disrupted a major Chinese hacking group called “Flax Typhoon,” months after confronting Beijing about widespread cyber espionage under a campaign called “Volt Typhoon.”
China’s Foreign Ministry said in its statement that Beijing’s cybersecurity agencies had found and published evidence to show that Volt Typhoon was staged by “an international ransomware organization.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
