Report: AT&T, Verizon aren’t notifying most victims of Chinese call-records hack
Ars Technica 2024-12-12
AT&T and Verizon reportedly are not notifying most customers whose call records were stolen in the ongoing attack attributed to Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon. NBC News reported today that "the vast majority of people whose call records have been stolen by Chinese hackers have not been notified, according to industry sources, and there is no indication that most affected people will be notified in the near future."
US government officials said last week that major telecom companies have been unable to fully evict the Chinese state-sponsored hackers from their networks. There have been direct notifications to specific targets, such as government officials, whose calls were listened to and whose text messages were accessed. "President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, senior congressional staffers and an array of US security officials were among scores of individuals to have their calls and texts directly targeted," The Wall Street Journal wrote.
For most other victims, the data accessed apparently didn't include the contents of communications. It instead consisted of metadata like the numbers that phones called and when. These people are not receiving notifications from carriers, NBC News wrote today: