Telcos Struggle To Boot Chinese Hackers From Networks (axios.com)
- Reference: 0175588611
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/12/03/2159242/telcos-struggle-to-boot-chinese-hackers-from-networks
- Source link: https://www.axios.com/2024/12/03/salt-typhoon-china-phone-hacks
> This is the first time U.S. officials have confirmed reports that Salt Typhoon hackers still have access to critical infrastructure -- and they're proving difficult to kick out. Officials added that they don't yet know the full scope of the intrusions, despite starting the investigation in late spring.
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> The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI released guidance Tuesday for the communications sector to harden their networks against Chinese state-sponsored hackers. The guide includes basic steps like maintaining logs of activity on the network, keeping an inventory of all devices in the telecom's environment and changing any default equipment passwords. The hack has given Salt Typhoon unprecedented access to records from U.S. telecommunications networks about who Americans are communicating with, a senior FBI official told reporters during a briefing.
[1] https://www.axios.com/2024/12/03/salt-typhoon-china-phone-hacks
Prevent mass surveillance (Score:2)
> ... includes basic steps ...
If all surveillance has to be approved by a central office, the system is reasonably protected. If the password is shared with entire police departments so automated mass surveillance can continue, nothing has changed.
While a central office prevents automated mass surveillance, the basic problem remains: Anyone can say "I'm a cop, this is urgent: Tell me about phone number X ". One cyber-intruder can do that 1,000 times a month, and after 6 months, he's got information on all senior bureaucrats and mil
Re: (Score:2)
>> ... includes basic steps ...
> If all surveillance has to be approved by a central office, the system is reasonably protected. If the password is shared with entire police departments so automated mass surveillance can continue, nothing has changed.
> While a central office prevents automated mass surveillance, the basic problem remains: Anyone can say "I'm a cop, this is urgent: Tell me about phone number X ". One cyber-intruder can do that 1,000 times a month, and after 6 months, he's got information on all senior bureaucrats and military personnel in the USA.
The problem - IMHO - isn't access. It's that the data is gathered in the first place. Maybe a cop gets impersonated. Or a department phished. Or a server hacked.
It doesn't matter how , it only matters that the data exists to be accessed. I get it... it's juicy. Knowing who a suspect interacted with, and where they went is very, very attractive to law enforcement. Knowing where a missing child's phone was last seen is useful. Understanding who was around a terrorist event sounds great.
But to viola
slasdot ads (Score:2)
Must be a change in chromium but I see lots of ads on slashdot now, even with the Disable Ads box checked.
These ads slow down the site substantially and hurt the site.
Frankly, the Temu ads are creepy. I'm not sure what they are selling exactly, AI pictures of school girls? What fucking creepers buy that shit? Why am I seeing this?
Seeing ads in one thing, seeing ads that have some inappropriate angle is just creepy and weird. Slashdot has always been a bit weird and troll-y, but never lecherous.
Hey slashdot,
Re: (Score:2)
Chromium is built on the Chrome code base. Chrome is developed by Google, the worlds biggest add platform. No point in complaining to Slashdot, they just feed ads from Google the same as everyone else. If you want to browse with the minimum of ads use Firefox with the UBlock Origin add on, or a similar combo from a company that does not make its income from ads.
Re: (Score:2)
> AI pictures of school girls? What fucking creepers buy that shit?
They are recruitment ads for Donald's New and Improved Lout-Swamp.
-5 Political Troll
Whatever floats their junk (Score:2)
> The hack has given Salt Typhoon unprecedented access to records from U.S. telecommunications networks about who Americans are communicating with
I hope China is really enjoying knowing when my partner gets off work, and how we're sometimes indecisive about what we're having for dinner. Truly, a great cause for national security concern. /s
here we go with usual narrative peddling (Score:1)
Why does slashdot pretend china, russia, iran and north korea are the only hackers?
We know that WE are ALL affected more by Israeli hackers and those they sell their products to.
Re: (Score:2)
But Israel knows how to kiss up to US evangelicals, so we turn a blind eye to them.
They are merely giving us (Score:2)
...a free reminder that our car's extended warranty is about to expire. Such nice people.
That's what you get... (Score:2)
That's what you get for booting very secure Huawei hardware and replace it with nsa/cia backdoored US hardware, it's so easy for most hackers to also use those backdoors.
Meanwhile: ongoing attacks from China (Score:2)
A couple of my webservers are currently under attack from a very dumb bot.
My daily log analysis showed a large number of ssh login attempts from a couple of Chinese /24 networks. The bot is very dumb because I set some rules to drop all packets from those /24 blocks (they were already rate-limited by fail2ban), but the bots continue the attack.
Re: (Score:1)
Redirect them to a honeypot and mess with them!
No fix (Score:2)
They will never be able to fix this until they give up on the idea that a backdoor can exist that only the good guys can use.
lawful access (Score:3)
National embarrassment.