Hackers linked to China targeted phones of former US President Donald Trump’s family and officials from the Biden administration, according to a New York Times report.
The hackers were able to break into a telecommunications company’s systems, the report on Tuesday said, citing people familiar with the matter.
State Department officials, Trump family members including Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, and prominent Democrats such as Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer were among those targeted by the spies, it said.
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Concerns about the hacking group have grown since media reports disclosed its activities last month.
On October 6, the Wall Street Journal reported that the group, nicknamed “Salt Typhoon”, had accessed the networks of broadband providers and obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping.
And last Friday (Oct 25), the Times reported that Chinese hackers targeted data from phones allegedly used by Trump and Senator JD Vance, his running mate from Ohio, quoting sources who said there had been a “sophisticated penetration” of Verizon’s phone system, which appeared to be a wide-ranging bid to collect intelligence.
Senior people on both Republican and Democrat campaign teams were alerted to the intrusion, it said.
The State Department, as well as aides for Trump family members, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions.
The White House, the National Security Agency, and the cybersecurity watchdog agency CISA did not immediately return messages.
A Schumer aide did not immediately reply to an email. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an email, although Beijing routinely denies being behind cyber-espionage campaigns.
- Reuters with additional input and editing by Jim Pollard
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