- FBI confirms suspicious activity on internal networks
- The infraction would have affected the surveillance and wiretapping systems
- The media suspects the involvement of the Chinese group Salt Typhoon
The FBI has said it addressed an apparent recent cyber incident that affected wiretaps and surveillance systems.
“The FBI identified and addressed suspicious activity on FBI networks, and we have leveraged all technical capabilities to respond,” the law enforcement agency said. cnnwithout giving more details.
While the FBI did not specifically say which systems it was protecting, cnn said the breach affected systems used to manage wiretaps and foreign intelligence surveillance orders, citing an anonymous source “familiar with the investigation.”
Another ‘typhoon’?
Like any other major organization, government or private sector, the FBI is under a constant barrage of cyberattacks. It is of particular interest to state-sponsored threat actors from countries such as Russia, North Korea, China and Iran, and has been breached in the past.
In November 2021, attackers compromised a system used by the FBI to send notifications from the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal. They managed to send more than 100,000 fake warning emails about an alleged cyber attack. The emails appeared to come from legitimate FBI addresses and warned of attacks by the hacking group TheDarkOverlord.
A year later, attackers infiltrated the InfraGard program (an FBI-run partnership with private companies that share cybersecurity intelligence) by posing as corporate executives and gaining memberships. They then tried to sell access on a cybercrime forum.
While the FBI did not say who was behind the breach, media suspect the Chinese group Salt Typhoon could be involved, as the same threat actor compromised US federal government systems used for wiretapping requests from court-authorized networks in 2024.
Salt Typhoon is known for its high-level cyber espionage campaigns on behalf of the Chinese government. His greatest achievement was entering the main telecommunications providers in the United States (AT&T, Verizon, Lumen, Charter Communications, Consolidated Communications, Comcast, Digital Realty and Windstream), as well as “dozens” of other countries.
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