Emerging Details of Chinese Hack Leave U.S. Officials Increasingly Concerned

Leaders of the top telecommunications companies were summoned to the White House on Friday to discuss a security problem that has been roiling the government: how to expel Chinese hackers from the deepest corners of the nation’s communications networks.

The meeting in the Situation Room came after weeks in which officials grew increasingly alarmed by what they had uncovered about the hack.

They now believe the hackers from a group called “Salt Typhoon,” closely linked to China’s Ministry of State Security, were lurking undetected inside the networks of the biggest American telecommunications firms for more than a year.

They have learned that the Chinese hackers got a nearly complete list of phone numbers the Justice Department monitors in its “lawful intercept” system, which places wiretaps on people suspected of committing crimes or spying, usually after a warrant is issued.

While officials do not believe the Chinese listened to those calls, the hackers were likely able to combine the phone numbers with geolocation data to create a detailed intelligence picture of who was being surveilled.

As a result, officials said, the penetration almost certainly gave China a road map to discover which of China’s spies the United States has identified and which they have missed.