Microsoft credited with spotting sophisticated Chinese hack that hit telecoms including T-Mobile
U.S. officials say a sophisticated Chinese hack that breached the networks of telecommunication giants may not have been spotted without help from Microsoft.
A New York Times report details the growing concern around a breach engineered over the past year that allowed a group linked to Chinese intelligence to read text messages and listen to phone calls of national security officials and U.S. politicians.
U.S. senator and former telecom exec Mark Warner called it “the most serious telecom hack in our history,” according to the NYT.
Telecom companies — including Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile — may still not know about the hack if it weren’t for Microsoft security researchers spotting unusual activity earlier this year, the NYT noted. That set off a secret investigation this summer into an attack known as “Salt Typhoon.”
The CEOs of AT&T and Verizon attended a White House meeting Friday to discuss the attack. The NYT reported that T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, who “initially doubted that the company had been compromised by the Chinese,” sent a deputy to the meeting.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that T-Mobile was hacked as part of the Salt Typhoon attack.
“Due to our security controls, network structure and diligent monitoring and response we have seen no significant impacts to T-Mobile systems or data,” T-Mobile said in a statement to GeekWire. “We see no evidence of access or exfiltration of any customer or other sensitive information as other companies may have experienced.”
Update: In a new statement, T-Mobile said that its “top cyber leader” joined the meeting at the White House. It noted that it has seen “increased targeted attacks from an unidentified party” but that it has had “no unauthorized access to sensitive customer information and has no indication that an attack is ongoing.”
Bloomberg reported this week that T-Mobile was able to contain a recent breach before it reached customer phones, though details about the suspected hackers is not clear.
T-Mobile has dealt with numerous cybersecurity-related breaches over the past several years.
Microsoft President Brad Smith this week appealed to the Trump administration to send a “strong message” on cybersecurity, saying it “deserves to be a more prominent issue of international relations.”
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft has been investing more heavily in cybersecurity-related efforts amid intense pressure to better protect its own systems and customers from cyberattacks following a series of high-profile hacks.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earlier this year vowed to put security “above all else.” The company this week unveiled a new $4 million bug bounty program, representing an additional pool of money to be shared among security researchers who identify holes in Microsoft’s cloud and AI systems.
Microsoft’s security-related ties to the U.S. government were the subject of a ProPublica report last week that described the company’s offer of cybersecurity help to the U.S. government in 2021 as “a calculated business maneuver designed to bring in billions of dollars in new revenue, box competitors out of lucrative government contracts and tighten the company’s grip on federal business.”
A U.S. cyber report last year found that Microsoft could have prevented a Chinese hack that enabled access of U.S. government emails through Microsoft’s Exchange Online software.