A US government security official urged Americans to use encrypted messaging as major telecom companies struggle to evict Chinese hackers from their networks. The attack has been attributed to a Chinese hacking group called Salt Typhoon.

There have been reports since early October that Chinese government hackers penetrated the networks of telecoms and may have gained access to systems used for court-authorized wiretaps of communications networks. Impacted telcos reportedly include Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Lumen (also known as CenturyLink).

T-Mobile has said its own network wasn't hacked but that it severed a connection it had to a different provider whose network was hacked. Lumen has said it has no evidence that customer data on its network was accessed. //

Despite recognizing the security benefits of encryption, US officials have for many years sought backdoors that would give the government access to encrypted communications. Supporters of end-to-end encryption have pointed out that backdoors can also be used by criminal hackers and other nation-states.

"For years, the security community has pushed back against these backdoors, pointing out that the technical capability cannot differentiate between good guys and bad guys," cryptographer Bruce Schneier wrote after the Chinese hacking of telecom networks was reported in October.

Noting the apparent hacking of systems for court-ordered wiretap requests, Schneier called it "one more example of a backdoor access mechanism being targeted by the 'wrong' eavesdroppers." //

These telecommunications companies are responsible for their lax cybersecurity and their failure to secure their own systems, but the government shares much of the blame," US Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in an October 11 letter to the FCC and Justice Department. "The surveillance systems reportedly hacked were mandated by federal law, through the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). CALEA, which was enacted in 1994 at the urging of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), forced phone companies to install wiretapping technology into then-emerging digital phone networks. In 2006, acting on a request from the FBI, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expanded this backdoor mandate to broadband Internet companies."