China’s recent breach of the innermost workings of the U.S. telecommunications system reached far deeper than the Biden administration has described, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said on Thursday, with hackers able to listen in on telephone conversations and read text messages.
“The barn door is still wide open, or mostly open,” the Democratic chairman, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a former telecommunications executive, said in an interview on Thursday.
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.
Persons:
Biden, Mark Warner of, Warner, Donald J, Trump, JD Vance
Organizations:
Senate Intelligence, Democratic, Microsoft, Verizon
Locations:
Mark Warner of Virginia, China