AT&T and Verizon Declare Their Networks Secure Amid Salt Typhoon Cyberattack
three months later Reports surfaced Two of the largest telecommunications companies said they have made progress in protecting their networks from the threat, as part of a cyberattack dubbed “Salt Typhoon” that targeted internet service providers and U.S. eavesdropping infrastructure.
AT&T and Verizon issued their first statements over the weekend regarding Typhoon Salt since cooperating with federal law enforcement and other entities. AT&T said in a statement that based on the investigation, China targeted “a small number of individuals with foreign intelligence interests” and that it was working to protect customer data.
Verizon, meanwhile, said it has “contained cyber incidents caused by nation-state threat actors” and that it has “detected no threat actor activity” in its network for some time. It added that third-party security firms had confirmed containment measures.
In late September and early October, reports first described the Typhoon Yan attack, which led the FBI to warn about certain types of messaging, such as RCS text messages between iOS and Android phones, may be dangerous.
It now appears that Typhoon Yan’s attacks were more targeted than previously thought, although the data and personal information of hundreds of millions of customers may have been at risk.
“In this incident, a small number of high-profile government and political customers were specifically targeted by threat actors,” Verizon said in a statement. “These customers have been notified about this activity.”
Verizon and AT&T both said they worked with government and law enforcement agencies, telecom industry partners and private cybersecurity companies.
“In the relatively rare cases where personal information was affected, we complied with our notification obligations,” AT&T said.
Ninth company hit by hackers over weekend Said to have been identifiedbut the White House did not release the name of the company.
T-Mobile reiterated Monday that it was not one of the nine companies mentioned by the government; blog post Detailed information is provided starting in late November.
