Hackers known as Salt Typhoon affected carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile by exploiting vulnerabilities in legacy infrastructure used to wiretap Americans’ phones.
Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, said the attack began more than a year ago and allowed hackers to collect metadata about phone calls, including geolocation and call history. While encrypted messages in private messengers were protected, messages between Apple and Android devices were vulnerable.
Fewer than 150 people were directly attacked, mostly in Washington, but the scale of the attack highlights the potential vulnerability of millions of Americans. Warner underlined the seriousness of the problem, stating that the United States’ fragmented and outdated telecommunications infrastructure is a critical weakness.
Source: Ferra
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