FBI Cyber Cop: Salt Typhoon Pwned Nearly Every American

Hey, do what you have to do.

We will.

Can't speak for every American, but I won't take offense. It's our job to protect our infrastructure, corporations and data. Not at all the responsibility of Europe, India or China. It's your job to protect yours.

Don't think that'll stop the NSA/CIA or CCP hackers much.

This is one of the most humiliating aspects of living here:

That the government is unwilling to genuinely protect its own interests, for example, by preventing ordinary people's data from leaking abroad or ensuring real internet privacy, because without these things we are so unbelievably vulnerable, not just to influence operations designed with this data, but they'll know literally the whole economic structure of the EU, how many people work where, where a particular person works, etc.

They're not even preventing foreign countries from getting access to bank transactions.

When they're denied they cry terrorism, but reality is that if you have this knowledge you can say 'Oh, impossibleFork just moved to X, and he's an expert in Y, he's probably doing Z and W. Let's hire some guys to try the exact same thing, so that it'll be a business here instead of there'.

I don't understand how a government can expect the country it governs to have an economy when it allows this kind of data leakage.

More like "US government demands doors be left unlocked, Chinese Communist Party walked in"

Then it would be flagged removed for having forbidden words in the title.

"Salt Typhoon" specifically refers to Microsoft's observations of malicious activity, which they believe to be associated with the Ministry of State Security.

They are obviously different from other official Chinese components, and the private sector actors that support them. The distinction is also made because other firms sometimes have differing assessments and visibility.

Man, good thing Doge and MAGA gutted 30% of that agency[1]. We certainly don't need a bunch of bureaucrats doing (checks notes) cybersecurity and infrastructure security right now.

[1] https://archive.is/20250603190111/https://www.axios.com/2025...

direct link: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa...

Almost as if having GDPR to keep at least the worst of the data-brokering/selling industry out is a good thing.

The more detailed report someone posted does sound like this was hacked at the source, but a lot of the data can be bought legally on the open, not-even-too-grey market. Some journalists bought one of the location data sets and used it to demonstrate that you can identify intelligence agency employees from it (if someone spends almost every workday at one site belonging to the agency, occasionally visits the other one... the other place that "anonymous" user spends a lot of time at is likely the home of an intelligence agency employee).

If the industry wasn't selling it to anyone who asks, they'd still likely keep it in easily hacked places.

> Victims reportedly included President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance

I wish the journalist had been a little cheeky and tried to get a quote from Angela Merkel.

> Side note, are there any ways to not get your data stolen in such cases?

don't use a phone number for anything. SIM should provide data only and be rovolved regularly.

Relevant excerpt:

>The FBI and CISA raised the alarm two months after The Wall Street Journal reported that hackers linked to the Chinese government have broken into systems that enable U.S. law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance operations under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).

>"These are for legitimate wiretaps that have been authorized by the courts," Hong says. But in hackers' hands, he says, the tools could potentially be used "to surveil communications and metadata for lots of people. And it seems like the [hackers'] focus is primarily Washington, D.C."

Given that the US intelligence community, with PRISM and Upstream and the like, hoovers up all the world's communications, I think the "norms" must be "nobody except the US was able to do this until now." Now China has shown that it can compete in the same space.

Indiscriminate targeting. It's clarified at the end of that paragraph, and was part of the article's lead-in:

   "There's a thought among the public that if you don't work in a sensitive area that the PRC might be interested in for its traditional espionage activities, then you are safe, they will not target you," [deputy assistant director for the FBI's cyber division] said, during a Thursday interview with The Register. "As we have seen from Salt Typhoon, this is no longer an assumption that anyone can afford to make."

The ones that are in his head, just as soft, curvy, and flexible as the matter inside

He's referring to the norm that only the American government is allowed to conduct unlawful mass surveillance of American citizens. Who do these Chinese think they are???

Yea, I wasn’t aware that there was a rule book for spies. I thought the only rule was “anything goes, but don’t get caught.” But perhaps I’m uninformed.

I'm really tempted to stop using phone numbers, altogether. The security is really bad, and phone numbers are used for identification almost as often as social security numbers, but there's no requirement to have one.

Top tier state-sponsored actors don't need backdoors, their skill, resources, and persistance mean they can penetrate almost any system. Ascrbing this to mandatory backdoors distracts from the fact we need to improve cyber resilence and build better offense.

Reading the Atlantic Council's recent paper on what the US can do to counter the system China has created which funnels exploits to their government shows how mistatched the West is versus China. Paper here: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/C...

Computers can never be 100% secure. It’s just a matter of how many zeros one is willing to spend, especially when physical access to the hardware is so easy (for nation states).

Verizon says they targeted certain politicians.

https://www.verizon.com/about/salt-typhoon-matter-update

Anecdote, but I have a friend in cybersecurity in Australia, and he was telling me a few months ago that China basically has almost all the data they could want on almost all of the US.

So what was the actual point of compromise? Was it a CALEA supporting software vendor? My guess is a common MD (Mediator device) vendor was targeted that was used by many carriers but that's speculation on my part.

Context for others, there's a small number of software vendors that make these MD devices that handle initiating a capture of a flow (a wiretapping request) and managing the chain of custody for a pcap. MDs usually sends an SNMP poll to a router/switch to start a (r)span port and the MD device slurps up all data and saves it.

Anyway, what I'm curious about is if it's the MDs that were taken over and if it was one manufacturer but I'm not seeing much technical info on all these reports.

Here's some context for "LI" for those interested: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst9...

Maybe this idiocy could be explained by the idea that the powers that be are more afraid of their own citizens than of any foreign threat.

  > You can get aides so I’m not worried about their ages.

  >> The vast majority of Congressmen don't even have an aid who specializes in tech.

IMHO, the real "morons" (your word) are those deploying Chinese-fabricated SoCs (like the latest ESP32, LinkStar, etc) and mainboards with Chinese-written BIOS/EFI/UEFI (like Zima) on what an increasing number of "influencers" deem "Raspberry Pi alternatives". Even when you cite the websites about things like "Moonbounce", there is a generation of workers in the Business now that become outwardly enraged and irrational about the risk and otherwise stick their head firmly in the sand while quietly knowing what they have done and will therefore likely continue to do is costing us the Country. Even if this effort wasn't part of VOLT, it certainly is consistent with the LAW in China that all companies must have CCP management and implement all requests required of them by that management. The worst part is that when you publicly confront these companies with this fact, for example, in Discord, they don't even deny it, they simply respond solemnly that "the other side does it too." (True, but our guys don't currently sell prisoner kidneys.)

Hey, I'll bet you never look at that WiFi-"enabled" power bank or HEPA/AC unit again the same way (or my favorite AI response du jour "Some Chinese scooters come with a microphone integrated into a GPS tracker or helmet, while others can be customized with aftermarket solutions. There is no single model called "Chinese scooter with microphone," but rather multiple products and approaches that fit this description.") Errbody worried about the talking LLM parrot AI and your vehicle dashboard always listening (or even watching), but that's not the most serious threat we face now.

>The NSA used to play defence and offence, and has gone full-offence for a generation.

And IIRC most of those people who used to work for the NSA now work at private firms like the NSO group, which is pretty scary when you think about it. It's hard to blame them though, if I was being offered the amount of money they were given, I would probably take it as well.

I recommend the book 'This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends' by Nicole Perlroth, it gives some good insights into what is going on behind the scenes (though with some of the major events which have happened since it was published some things may be outdated. Either way it's a good read.)

A door with a lock can only be opened by those with a key...

as well as anyone that can pick the lock, jimmy the lock, remove the door from its hinges, remove the lock, break the door down, go under the door, go over the door, get somebody with a key to open the door, and many other methods which can be found with just a little imagination.

... morons with moral superiority complex.

They havent forgotten their offensive operations, they never knew about it or never cared.

Exactly. China can't do much with my data, compared to the US government or my insurance company.

Because it means the US probably can't win a ground or sea war against them.

Yes. Have you not yet learned that normal people dont care about privacy?