A US investigation into Chinese government efforts to hack into US telecommunications networks has revealed a “broad and significant” cyberespionage campaign aimed at stealing information from people who work in government and politics, the FBI said on Wednesday.
Hackers affiliated with Beijing have compromised the networks of “multiple” telecommunications companies to obtain customer call records and gain access to the private communications of “a limited number of individuals,” the FBI and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a joint statement.
The FBI did not identify any of the individuals targeted by the hackers, but said that most of them “are primarily involved in government or political activity.”
Photo: AP
The hackers also sought to copy “certain information that was subject to US law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders,” the FBI said, suggesting that the hackers might have been trying to compromise programs like those subject to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which grants US spy agencies powers to surveil the communications of people suspected of being agents of a foreign power.
The warning comes after several high-profile hacking incidents that US authorities have linked to China, part of what they say is an effort to steal technological and government information, while also targeting vital infrastructure such as the electrical grid.
Officials are working with the telecommunications industry and people affected by hacking to shore up defenses against continuing attempts at cyberespionage, the statement said.
“We expect our understanding of these compromises to grow,” it said.
China has rejected accusations by US officials that it engages in cyberespionage directed against Americans.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS