The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Chinese hackers (Salt Typhoon) penetrated the networks of US broadband providers, and might have accessed the backdoors that the federal government uses to execute court-authorized wiretap requests. Those backdoors have been mandated by law—CALEA—since 1994.
It’s a weird story. The first line of the article is: “A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers.” This implies that the attack wasn’t against the broadband providers directly, but against one of the intermediary companies that sit between the government CALEA requests and the broadband providers.
For years, the security community has pushed back against these backdoors, pointing out that the technical capability cannot differentiate between good guys and bad guys. And here is one more example of a backdoor access mechanism being targeted by the “wrong” eavesdroppers.
More Stories
American Water Hit by Cyber-Attack, Billing Systems Disrupted
American Water, the largest water utility in the US, discovered a cyber-attack impacting internal systems on October 3 Read More
Cloud Security Risks Surge as 38% of Firms Face Exposures
Tenable’s latest report reveals 38% of organizations face risks from a “toxic cloud triad” of security gaps Read More
The AI Fix #19: AI spy specs, robot dogs with ladders, and is it AI or the climate?
In episode 19 of "The AI Fix" podcast, Graham and Mark discover some AI podcast hosts having an existential crisis,...
31 New Ransomware Groups Join the Ecosystem in 12 Months
Secureworks reports a 30% increase in active ransomware groups despite law enforcement efforts, with 31 new groups emerging in the...
US Warns of Foreign Interference in Congressional Races Ahead of Election
Iran is targeting the US presidential race, China the congressional races, and Russia both Read More
Cyber Fraud Cost up to $37bn in Southeast Asia Last Year
A UN report found that organized crime groups in the region have rapidly integrated malware, generative AI and deepfakes to...