Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels
Been reading about this Salt Typhoon thing and I cant stop thinking about it. Chinese hackers got into the wiretap systems of basically every major US telecom — AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, nine companies total. Not the regular network.. the actual lawful intercept infrastructure. The systems the FBI uses to tap phone calls.
The US government mandated these backdoors since the 90s (CALEA act). Every carrier has to build them in. ANd now a foreign intelligence service walked right through that exact door. They reportedly even intercepted calls from Trump and Vance during the campaign..
best part? Officials are saying Salt Typhoon is probably still inside the networks. And both AT&T and Verizon are blocking the release of the security reports. Congress wants hearings but the telcos dont want anyone to see how bad it was.
reminds me of every job where management said "just add an admin account for support access" and I said thats a terrible idea and they did it anyway. Same energy, nation-state scale ;-)
anyway thats whats on my mind today. anyone else following this?
