Offi­cials Urge Amer­i­cans to Use Encrypt­ed Apps amid Chi­nese Cyber­at­tack

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Officials Urge Americans to Use Encrypted Apps amid Chinese Cyberattack

Offi­cials with the FBI and Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and Infra­struc­ture Secu­ri­ty Agency (CISA) are implor­ing Amer­i­cans to use encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing apps in the wake of an unprece­dent­ed Chi­nese cyber­at­tack on major com­pa­nies like AT&T and Ver­i­zon.

The FBI and CISA are urg­ing U.S. cit­i­zens to use encrypt­ed apps in order to keep their com­mu­ni­ca­tions hid­den from for­eign hack­ers, adding that it is “impos­si­ble” to deter­mine when telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies will be safe again from these intrud­ers, accord­ing to a report by NBC News.

A Chi­nese hack­ing cam­paign known as “Salt Typhoon” aimed at com­pa­nies like Microsoft “is one of the largest intel­li­gence com­pro­mis­es in U.S. his­to­ry, and it has not yet been ful­ly reme­di­at­ed,” the out­let report­ed.

U.S. offi­cials told NBC on Tues­day that spies in Chi­na has hacked AT&T, Ver­i­zon, and Lumen Tech­nolo­gies. A spokesper­son for the Chi­nese Embassy in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., mean­while, told the out­let that the com­mu­nist regime wasn’t behind the hacks, adding, “Chi­na firm­ly oppos­es and com­bats all kinds of cyber attacks.”

But Jeff Greene, exec­u­tive assis­tant direc­tor for cyber­se­cu­ri­ty at CISA, told NBC, “Our sug­ges­tion, what we have told folks inter­nal­ly, is not new here: Encryp­tion is your friend, whether it’s on text mes­sag­ing or if you have the capac­i­ty to use encrypt­ed voice com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

“Even if the adver­sary is able to inter­cept the data, if it is encrypt­ed, it will make it impos­si­ble,” Greene added.

A senior FBI offi­cial, mean­while, told the out­let that those look­ing to pro­tect their com­mu­ni­ca­tions “would ben­e­fit from con­sid­er­ing using a cell­phone that auto­mat­i­cal­ly receives time­ly oper­at­ing sys­tem updates, respon­si­bly man­aged encryp­tion and phish­ing resis­tant” mul­ti-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion for email, social media, and oth­er mes­sag­ing tools.

The FBI offi­cial — who asked to remain anony­mous — added that the for­eign hack­ers have main­ly accessed three types of infor­ma­tion.

The first type involved call records that reveal phone num­bers peo­ple have called and when the calls were made — gen­er­al­ly focus­ing on call records in the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. area. The FBI does not plan to inform those who had their phone records com­pro­mised.

The sec­ond type of hack involved live phone calls of spe­cif­ic tar­gets.

While the FBI did not dis­close who those tar­gets were, the pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns for Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump, Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris, as well as the office of Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer (D‑NY) told NBC in Octo­ber that the FBI informed them they were tar­get­ed.

The third issue report­ed­ly involves sys­tems that telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies use on the off-chance that law enforce­ment or intel­li­gence agen­cies would need to access people’s infor­ma­tion with court orders.

The FBI offi­cial added that U.S. offi­cials do not believe the for­eign hack was intend­ed to sway elec­tion results, despite it being car­ried out ahead of the 2024 elec­tion.

Instead, the hack was like­ly con­duct­ed for the pur­pose of col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion on U.S. pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment, the FBI offi­cial told NBC.

“We see this as a cyberes­pi­onage cam­paign, not dis­sim­i­lar to any oth­er approach­es,” the FBI offi­cial said. “Cer­tain­ly the way they went about it was very, very spe­cif­ic about the tel­cos and the ISPs, but it fits into the cyberes­pi­onage buck­et.”

Encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing apps that con­sumers can use in order to employ end-to-end encryp­tion in calls and text mes­sages include Sig­nal and What­sApp. Google Mes­sages and iMes­sage are also options.

Alana Mas­trange­lo is a reporter for Bre­it­bart News. You can fol­low her on Face­book and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Insta­gram.