‘Whatever we did was not enough’: How Salt Typhoon slipped through the government’s blind spots

The first time some of the largest telecom companies in the world heard of Salt Typhoon was in a Wall Street Journal article.

The story, which was published last September, blindsided company executives and industry insiders. As news of the attack on the country’s broadband networks broke, the scope and severity of the breach became clear. The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee dubbed it “the worst telecom hack in our nation’s history.” The breach, carried out by a Chinese government-linked hacking group, had resulted in a total of around 80 different firms compromised at last count, with the attackers in the networks for potentially years as it siphoned up data from more than 1 million people.

Telecom companies were upset to learn about the breach from the Journal story instead of the federal government. One telecom industry source called it “disconcerting” that large companies hadn’t heard about it first from government agencies, and major providers “felt like information wasn’t handled correctly.

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