At first, the F.B.I. and other investigators believed that China’s hackers used stolen passwords to focus mostly on the system…
At first, the F.B.I. and other investigators believed that China’s hackers used stolen passwords to focus mostly on the system that taps telephone conversations and texts under court orders. It is administered by a number of the nation’s telecommunications firms, including the three largest — Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. But in recent days, investigators have discovered how deeply China’s hackers had moved throughout the country by exploiting aging equipment and seams in the networks connecting disparate systems.
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But the Chinese activity in the past year has taken these intrusions to a new level, Mr. Warner said on Thursday. “This is far and away the most serious telecom hack in our history,” he said. “This makes Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds look like small potatoes.”
He said that only in the past week had it become clear that “every major provider has been broken into.”
The hackers were not able to listen to conversations on encrypted applications, like those carried over WhatsApp or Signal. Nor could they read encrypted messages, such as those sent from one iPhone to another over Apple’s iMessage system. But they could read regular text messages between an iPhone and an Android phone, for example, or listen to phone calls over the ordinary telephone networks, much as the government can if it has a legal order.
The Chinese went after the conversations of national security officials, politicians and some of their staff, investigators have concluded. There may have been several Chinese groups at work, said a senior official involved in the investigation, who noted that one of them might have focused on Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance.How nice of the US government to provide a convenient method for it to be spied on