Top US senator confirms China is listening in on phone calls, including the Presidents

Last week, telecommunications executives sat in front of the Biden administration and discussed the exponential frequency of cyber attacks from China on the United States, with one Senator saying the attacks from China make severe cyber security events such as Solar Winds caused by Russia-affiliated bad actors look like "child's play."

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The details come from Senator Mark R Warner, who spoke to the press and said that "my hair is on fire" with the ramping cyber attacks from China, which started increasing well before the recent US election. Additionally, the Senator stated the presence and nature of the attacks may require the replacement of "literally thousands and thousands and thousands" of routers, switches, and other potentially infiltrated hardware.

Furthermore, the Senator warned that the extent to which these attacks have affected US networks is currently unknown, describing the situation as follows: "The barn door is still wide open, or mostly open." More specifically, US telecommunications networks that have been infiltrated may provide Chinese state employees or affiliated hackers with the means of listening in on phone calls, even as high as President-elect Donald Trump.

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These statements from Warner reiterate the warnings recently issued by the FBI and CISA that the Chinese government-associated hacking group Salt Typhoon had breached multiple US commercial telecommunications networks in what appears to be a mass cyber espionage campaign involving stealing customer call data and accessing private communications of US government officials.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said hackers have listened to phone calls and read texts by exploiting the security of aging hardware, along with the seams that connect systems to networks.