T-Mobile Hacked In Massive Chinese Breach of Telecom Networks 8
Chinese hackers, reportedly linked to a Chinese intelligence agency, breached T-Mobile as part of a broader cyber-espionage campaign targeting telecom companies to spy on high-value intelligence targets. "T-Mobile is closely monitoring this industry-wide attack, and at this time, T-Mobile systems and data have not been impacted in any significant way, and we have no evidence of impacts to customer information," a company spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal. Reuters reports: It was unclear what information, if any, was taken about T-Mobile customers' calls and communications records, according to the report. On Wednesday, The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. cyber watchdog agency CISA said China-linked hackers have intercepted surveillance data intended for American law enforcement agencies after breaking into an unspecified number of telecom companies. Further reading: U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack
"data intended for American law enforcement" (Score:1)
I understand the legal principles that got us here, but it is still fairly amazing to think about how one of our biggest information vulnerabilities as a society comes from this weird game where it's wrong for the government to create or store these monitoring dossiers, but very right for the government to demand private businesses make them so they can sit around pending subpoena.
Re: (Score:2)
A police-state pretending to not be a police-state will do things like that. But fear not. The illusion that the US is "the land of the free" will soon collapse.
Backdoors (Score:4, Insightful)
> China-linked hackers have intercepted surveillance data intended for American law enforcement agencies after breaking into an unspecified number of telecom companies.
Incidentally (and not entirely unrelatedly) this is why encryption back doors are a bad idea.
LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
If you only -knew- just how fast American Telecoms are outsourcing their work overseas it would give you pause.
Within my own company, everyone who leaves ( fired, retires, laid off ) is being replaced with contractors. Many
of them sitting in overseas facilities.
They don't need to " hack " anything. When you have employees who are literally making pennies on the dollar
will full root / admin / enable mode access to entire networks, ( including those networks that previously had
restrictions in place that mandated US citizens only out of National Security concerns ) all you have to do is
wave enough money at one of the very underpaid contractors and you'll get access to anything you want.
While a US employee is stil vulnerable to such things, the companies have made it cheaper to go after the
overseas employees since X amount of money goes further overseas than it does in the US.
Re: (Score:2)
Does not sound like this industry has a future. Reminds me when some european infrastructure providers ran into serious trouble because the situation in Egypt became unstable. Also great way to attack a country by cutting cables on the other side of the world.
Remember (Score:2)
Chinese intel agency hackers ;) (Score:2)
b. Why didn't they just hire on NSO Group [slashdot.org] to do the hacking.