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Chinese hackers breached National Guard to steal network configurations
The Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known as Salt Typhoon breached and remained undetected in a U.S. Army National Guard network for nine months in 2024, stealing network configuration files and administrator credentials that could be used to compromise other government networks.
Salt Typhoon is a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group that is believed to be affiliated with China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) intelligence agency. The hacking group has gained notoriety over the past two years for its wave of attacks on telecommunications and broadband providers worldwide, including AT&T, Verizon, Lumen, Charter, Windstream, and Viasat.
The goal of some of these attacks was to gain access to sensitive call logs, private communications, and law-enforcement wiretap systems used by the U.S. government.
National Guard network breached for nine monthsA June 11 Department of Homeland Security memo, first reported by NBC, says that Salt Typhoon breached a U.S. state's Army National Guard network for nine months between March and December 2024.
During this time, the hackers stole network diagrams, configuration files, administrator credentials, and personal information of service members that could be used to breach National Guard and government networks in other states.
[...] China's embassy in Washington did not deny the attack but stated the U.S. had not provided "conclusive and reliable evidence" that Salt Typhoon is linked to the Chinese government.
(Score: 2) by hopdevil on Tuesday July 29 2025, @03:22AM (3 children)
Does getting caught mean you are bad at operations or is this the equivalent of a stake in the ground, "I've [publicly] gotten this far"?
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday July 29 2025, @03:46AM
Just a kind of Dou Qi sect, building their name in Jianghu.
The kinder you are, the easier it is for wicked people to morally coerce you.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by canopic jug on Tuesday July 29 2025, @05:19AM (1 child)
Does getting caught mean you are bad at operations or is this the equivalent of a stake in the ground, "I've [publicly] gotten this far"?
Probably the latter, they are just declaring publicly how far they got in those particular systems or are just making some noise on the way out to let the proprietors know who was in there now that they are done and would otherwise remain undetected.
Salt Typhoon / Red Mike is the direct result of the hard coded back doors mandated by CALEA and CALEA2. The early articles used to mention that legislation by name, and even point out that all the right people warned of the danger in advance. Now the articles try to misdirect attention from the reality that these back door are still required by law, the back doors are still present, and those hard coded, mandated back doors are still letting the CCP and everyone else run freely through US networks with impunity.
There is collateral damage outside the US related to the inability to check for and remove back doors before deployment: Public money, public code [publiccode.eu]. Inside the US, this is a problem they brought on themselves through mandating back doors. Furthermore, there are no serious technical reasons to ever be using closed source, proprietary software within national computing infrastructures. However, declining educational abilities at a global scale affect that be reducing those actually able to work with ICT to near zero. Yes, there are some people here and there who do learn ICT in spite of what goes on in place of education at college. But they are the exception and not the rule.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 29 2025, @05:20AM