The Chinese hackers that caused a stir with their penetration of Verizon and AT&T appear to have used their access to target the phones of Donald Trump and JD Vance, according to an insider source speaking to the media anonymously. The hackers were previously known to have targeted law enforcement surveillance systems within the phone networks, but appear to have also been conducting a broad campaign of harvesting phone data from election campaigns and senior officials.
The source did not indicate that Trump and Vance were breached, but said that the Chinese hackers also targeted members of the Harris/Walz team and the Biden administration. Rather than election interference, the group simply seems to be scooping up any phone data from high-level political players that it can get ahold of. The incident follows a successful breach of Trump staffers by Iranian hackers earlier this year.
Phone data heavily targeted, but unclear exactly what was taken
Thus far officials are being tight-lipped about the campaign of the Chinese hackers and any phone data they might have accessed, which points to something potentially being stolen. As to what is anyone’s guess. The anonymous source said that about 40 people are known to have been targeted in total as part of this specific campaign and that the illicit Verizon access was likely used specifically to target Trump and Vance.
Earlier in the year, members of the Trump campaign had email accounts breached by state-backed hackers linked to Iran. This one appeared to be a more clear case of election interference, paired with the fact that Iran has reportedly sent agents to the US to seek an attempt to assassinate Trump. The Iranian hackers also forwarded the emails they stole to Biden campaign staffers.
While we still do not know if the Chinese hackers accessed individual accounts, the level of access they had to the telcos indicates they likely could scrape metadata at the very least. This can reveal things like GPS locations and the movement history of subjects, which could in turn provide further sensitive information. It might also provide technical specifics on personal devices that could aid hackers in targeting them.
Chinese hackers likely siphoned data for months
Solid information on the phone data is thin, but the House Homeland Security Committee has opened an investigation and the FBI and CISA have an ongoing investigation that is paired with security staff from Microsoft and Google’s Mandiant.
The inside source named a few other people that were specifically targeted by the Chinese hackers, though no word if they were actually compromised: Donald Trump’s son Eric, former campaign adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner (who has not been part of Trump’s current campaign), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The FBI is privately contacting all parties that have been targeted for phone data.
China has denied all involvement and said that it has no intention of interfering in the election.
