This is your Digital Frontline: Daily China Cyber Intel podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here on Digital Frontline. We're diving into what's been happening in the Chinese cyber space over the last 24 hours, and let me tell you, it's been absolutely wild.

So here's the headline that's got everyone's attention right now. A former FBI official just went on record saying that practically every American has been impacted by something called Salt Typhoon, which is this massive Chinese state-backed cyberattack campaign. We're talking about a five-year operation targeting telecommunications infrastructure across the entire United States. According to former FBI cyber official Cynthia Kaiser, she cannot envision any American who was completely spared from this breach given the sheer breadth of the campaign. That's not hyperbole, listeners. That's a serious assessment from someone who actually knows.

What makes Salt Typhoon so terrifying is the scope of access these hackers achieved. Pete Nicoletti, who's the chief information security officer at Check Point, explained that the attackers had what he calls full reign access to telecommunications data. This means they could monitor phone calls, text messages, and basically any communication flowing through those networks. Your grandmother calling to remind you to pick up groceries? Potentially intercepted. Former President Trump, Special Counsel John Vance, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other high-ranking government officials were deliberately targeted for surveillance.

The operation involved three Chinese companies working directly for China's Ministry of State Security and units within the People's Liberation Army. These actors established persistent access over five years, extracting communications and mapping movements of their targets globally. What's keeping cybersecurity experts up at night now is that these groups may still be embedded in various American organizations and completely undetected.

Here's where it gets even more concerning for your organization. The Trump administration has been scaling back cyber defenses precisely when threats are accelerating. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, has experienced a one-third cut in staff. That's according to current and former officials, along with cybersecurity experts. Chris Krebs, the founding CISA director, put it bluntly saying the federal cyber posture has been scaled back while adversaries are accelerating with artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission just dropped telecommunications security standards that were mandated after the Salt Typhoon discovery. That means the very networks that were just targeted now have fewer protections in place.

For your organizations right now, the recommendations are straightforward. Update your cybersecurity protocols immediately. Report any suspicious activity to authorities. Assume that the Chinese actors behind Salt Typhoon may still have backdoors into your systems. Implement multi-factor authentication everywhere possible. Conduct forensic examinations of your critical devices and communications systems. And honestly, listeners, don't assume you're small enough to have been skipped over during this five-year campaign.

Thanks for tuning into Digital Frontline. Make sure to subscribe for tomorrow's briefing. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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