China's Salt Typhoon Adds Charter, Windstream to Telecom Victim List

This past weekend, the Chinese state-backed hackers known as Salt Typhoon allegedly targeted their latest victims: Charter Communications, Consolidated Communications, and Windstream.

This comes after the group targeted a variety of other communications companies and ISPs, including AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen, accessing text messages, voicemails, and phone calls.

According to Anne Neuberger, White House deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, nine US telecoms have been targeted and breached by Chinese hackers so far. Whether or not these latest three are included as a part of that list remains unclear.

Because of this tidal wave of Salt Typhoon telco breaches occurring in the US and around the world, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is advising senior government officials to switch to end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, such as Signal, in order to prevent the risk of interception.

"Possible targets of these Chinese attackers need to immediately follow the steps outlined by the FBI and NSA to help harden their systems against attack," said Chris Hauk, consumer privacy champion at Pixel Privacy, in an emailed statement to Dark Reading. "Patching and upgrading apps and devices, limiting the types of connections and privileged accounts, and only using strong encryption, are just some of the steps organizations can take to harden their systems against attack."

The US Department of Treasury has also made moves to mitigate risk from other Chinese threat groups, by sanctioning Integrity Technology Group, a Chinese cybersecurity company, for its role in Flax Typhoon-led incidents against US victims. That action comes after the Treasury Department was targeted by another Chinese state-backed threat actor.

Other major government developments include US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) announcing a bill aimed at securing American telecom infrastructure, and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Jessica Rosenworcel stating that the agency will act with swiftness to ensure the cybersecurity of US carriers.