Donald Trump and Kamala Harris
– Photo: Amar Ujala
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Chinese hackers are accused of breaking into the communication devices of US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Not only this, this group of hackers has also targeted many companies in America's telecom sector. Now America's investigative agencies are busy assessing the damage. The group of these Chinese hackers is being called Salt Typhoon. According to American media reports, these hackers have breached the sensitive data and telecommunication networks of the telecom sector.
Data of Trump, Kamala Harris as well as telecom companies breached
According to reports, Salt Typhoon not only targeted Trump and Kamala Harris, but the group also tried to hack the data of Vice Presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance. At the same time, hacking of telecom sector companies is being linked to China's attempt to gather intelligence information. The hacking of American telecom company Verizon was done with the aim of collecting sensitive intelligence information. However, it is not yet clear whether the hackers were successful in their objective or not. American agencies are engaged in investigation.
what is salt typhoon
Microsoft's cyber security team has given the name Salt Typhoon to the group of Chinese hackers. This is a group of hackers funded by the Chinese government. The focus of this group is not traditional hacking or stealing corporate data, but this group steals intelligence information. This is why Microsoft's cyber security team has named it Salt. Similarly, Microsoft has named Iran's hackers as Sandstorm, Russia's hackers as Blizzard and China's hackers as Typhoon.
The focus of Salt Typhoon is to gather intelligence from US assets and institutions. In this series, Salt Typhoon has compromised the communication devices of top political figures and their staff as well as people close to the government. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a joint statement acknowledging the seriousness of the threat, confirming that US government agencies are the target of hackers linked to China.
In their statement, the FBI and CISA said they are working closely with private sector companies to strengthen cybersecurity. Investigative agencies are concerned that Salt Typhoon may have obtained important metadata from which a lot of information could be obtained through intelligence means. For example, information about security vulnerabilities in communication channels can be obtained from call patterns, timings and frequencies from meta data. Chinese intelligence agencies can gather information about America's elections and decision-making process in America from this data.
