According to a New York Times report citing people with knowledge of the situation, Chinese hackers have been stealing information from the devices that former president Donald Trump and his running partner JD Vance used. What connection data were the thieves stealing or observing, according to investigators.
An intelligence agency had find” a lot of valuable information” on the phones of a political candidate and his working partner: who they called and texted, how frequently they spoke to people, and how long they stayed in touch with them. According to the NYT report, that kind of communication data might be even more important if hackers may pick up the interceptor.
According to information obtained by the Donald Trump campaign, Trump and Vance’s apps were among a number of people working for and for the government whose telephone numbers had been hacked by the Verizon telephone systems.
Even without the content of the calls and messages themselves, information about a political and vice-presidential candidate’s communications may aid an adversary like China in identifying and directing people in Trump’s inner circle to influence operations, according to the report.
No one from the Trump campaign’s press office instantly inquired as to whether Vance and Trump had targeted their phones. But in a statement, the official, Steven Cheung, criticized the White House and Vice President Kamala Harris and sought to blame them for allowing a foreign adversary to pin the plan.
Security officials earlier this year discovered the presence of a Salt Typhoon phishing group in Western communications systems. However, the officials said that investigators had only recently discovered that the hackers were attempting to hack particular phone numbers.
The preliminary work is still being done to determine the amount of the hackers and any potential harm to national security. It’s difficult to predict whether a hack would be able to track or record phone conversations, and whether or not the attackers may read or intercept writings, for instance, would depend in large part on the messaging apps the target used and how much data moved over the telephone company’s systems.
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