China has been the source of hacking concerns for two decades. At first, the biggest worry was the theft of intellectual property, such as chip designs and plans for military equipment.
Those included the F-35, America’s most advanced fighter jet, whose blueprints China stole from American military contractors. Then, during the Bush and Obama administrations, China’s focus turned to understanding American government officials.
Russia carved a different path. Late in Trump’s first term, it placed code into products turned out by a company called SolarWinds, which provided software to the federal government and America’s largest companies. Hackers backed by Moscow also got into the network of a major gas and fuel distributor, Colonial Pipeline, disrupting the supply of petrol in the first year of the Biden administration.
But the Chinese activity in the past year has taken these intrusions to a new level, Warner said on Thursday. “This is far and away the most serious telecom hack in our history,” he said. “This makes Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds look like small potatoes.”
He said that only in the past week had it become clear that “every major provider has been broken into”.
The hackers were not able to listen to conversations on encrypted applications, like those carried over WhatsApp or Signal. Nor could they read encrypted messages, such as those sent from one iPhone to another over Apple’s iMessage system. But they could read regular text messages between an iPhone and an Android phone, for example, or listen to phone calls over the ordinary telephone networks, much as the government can if it has a legal order.
The Chinese went after the conversations of national security officials, politicians and some of their staff, investigators have concluded. There may have been several Chinese groups at work, a senior officialsaid.
“It wasn’t like the equivalent of a tap on your phone for a constant, 24/7 time,” Warner said. Instead, he said, they could listen to specific targets for specific periods.
Investigators believe that, so far, the Chinese hackers lack the ability to go back into the records they gained access to and listen to past calls. But they could gather metadata about previous calls – the phone numbers called, the length of the calls and perhaps the rough location of the mobile phones involved. Even if they did not listen to many calls, the metadata and geolocation data the Chinese have gathered of important American officials are alarming.
Warner said it was important to let investigators continue their work to discover the extent of the penetration and learn more. But he said it was crucial that the public understand the intrusion was not confined to Washington but was far broader and exposed critical vulnerabilities.