The US government is looking into Chinese hackers’ unauthorised access to commercial telecoms equipment, with targets including the Trump and Harris campaigns.
The campaigns have been told of a potential breach of cellphones used by former President Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as well as staffers of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Attributing the attack to Chinese-affiliated entities, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Equipment Security Agency announced late Friday that they were looking into “unauthorised access” to commercial telecommunications equipment.
Although there may be more victims, the agencies said they promptly alerted the impacted organisations after discovering the breach and offered assistance.
The FBI and CISA said the investigation was ongoing and “we encourage any organization that believes it might be a victim to engage its local FBI field office or CISA.
“Agencies across the U.S. Government are collaborating to aggressively mitigate this threat and are coordinating with our industry partners to strengthen cyber defences across the commercial communications sector.”
Following accusations of purported Chinese attempts to hack the mobile phones of the Republican Party’s presidential nominee and his running mate, China’s embassy in Washington said that the US had disseminated “disinformation.”
“In recent years, The US has compiled and spread all kinds of disinformation about the so-called Chinese hacking threats. Such allegations are full of malicious speculations against China, which China firmly opposes,” the embassy spokesperson told the Post in an email.
We earlier reported that Chinese hackers gained access to US internet providers’ networks and data from federal government systems used for court-authorized surveillance.
