Chinese hackers have targeted phones used by Republican US presidential candidate and former US president Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, US media reported on Friday.
The New York Times, quoting people familiar with the matter, said the hacking attempt appeared to be part of a wide-ranging intelligence collection effort by Chinese hackers.
The newspaper said it involved the infiltration of Verizon phone systems, and investigators were seeking to determine whether any communications data was taken.
Photo: AFP
A person familiar with the matter said the campaign of Democratic US presidential candidate and US Vice President Kamala Harris, and her running mate Tim Walz was also targeted.
“We are aware that a highly sophisticated nation-state actor has reportedly targeted several US telecommunications providers to gather intelligence,” Verizon spokesman Rich Young said.
The Times said the Trump campaign was informed this week that the former president and Vance were among a number of people inside and outside US government whose phone numbers had been targeted.
Western cybersecurity experts believe the hacking was carried out by a Chinese group known as “Salt Typhoon,” the newspaper said.
The Washington Post said the hacking campaign is believed to have compromised the phones of two staffers on the Trump-Vance campaign.
The FBI declined to comment on the reports that Trump’s and Vance’s phones had been targeted.
However, the FBI and US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in a joint statement said that the “US government is investigating the unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China.”
“After the FBI identified specific malicious activity targeting the sector, the FBI and [CISA] immediately notified affected companies, rendered technical assistance, and rapidly shared information to assist other potential victims,” they said.
“Agencies across the US Government [sic] are collaborating to aggressively mitigate this threat and are coordinating with our industry partners to strengthen cyber defenses across the commercial communications sector,” they added.
The US charged three Iranians last month with involvement in a hacking effort targeting the Trump campaign.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS