CNN
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Chinese government-affiliated hackers have targeted Eric Trump, Jared U.S. officials believe they targeted Mr. Kushner’s call and text data. Three people familiar with the matter told CNN about the percentage of people believed to have been affected.
Former President Donald Trump’s son and son-in-law have also joined the list of major politicians that U.S. authorities believe have been targeted by China’s elite hacking team. Other targets include Trump himself, his running mate J.D. Vance, and Harris Walz campaign officials, CNN previously reported. Another person briefed on the matter told CNN that the hackers also targeted prominent Democratic politicians, including staffers for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The scope of the hack is “much more serious than the public knows,” and authorities are still reviewing the breach to determine the impact, another person familiar with the intelligence community told CNN. Ta.
In some cases, the hackers may have had access to their targets’ call and text data for months, two sources said. The FBI is notifying people whose phone data was targeted.
The New York Times first reported that Eric Trump and Kushner were targeted.
U.S. officials investigating the hacking campaign, which breached U.S. telecommunications companies AT&T, Lumen and Verizon, called it one of the most alarming national security hacks in recent memory. We believe the situation is more serious than initial reports suggested.
And the timing of this revelation comes just days after the high-stakes election as the FBI conducts a sensitive investigation into hacks targeting both the Trump and Harris campaigns. It means that there is.
U.S. officials said the hackers did not appear to be trying to influence the election itself, as the Iranians who infiltrated the Trump campaign earlier this year tried to do. However, they are seeking to collect information about the private communications of senior officials from both parties, which would be of keen interest to the Chinese government.
Investigators believe the hackers are also likely searching for other sensitive national security information, which could include information related to the Justice Department’s request for a wiretap warrant, CNN reported. previously reported.
“This is a real-time wiretap,” one of the sources told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive ongoing investigation. “They thoroughly hacked the systems that the Department of Justice requires (telcos) to maintain for legitimate access.”
“Maybe we should let Huawei into our network,” the official said, referring to Chinese telecom giant Huawei, which the U.S. has imposed restrictions on by banning it from accessing federal networks over espionage concerns. I can’t do it,” he added.
Eric Trump regularly appears on the campaign trail with his father and has been one of his father’s most prominent surrogates, holding campaign events across the country. Eric’s wife, Lara, was named co-chair of the Republican National Committee earlier this year.
Mr. Kushner has largely kept a low profile this election cycle. Two years ago, his wife, Ivanka Trump, announced that she and Kushner were stepping back from politics to focus on their family.
“Is anyone surprised by this? Under Mr. Kamala and Mr. Biden, China roamed all over our country,” Eric Trump said in a statement to CNN.
There is no indication anyone had access to data related to Jared Kushner or his devices, a person familiar with the matter told CNN.
CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment. The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., denied that hackers backed by the Chinese government infiltrated U.S. telecommunications companies, calling the information a “distortion of facts.”
The FBI declined to comment. The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency acknowledged in a statement last week that they were investigating “unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by persons affiliated with the People’s Republic of China,” but did not say who was targeted. There wasn’t.
The Trump campaign is operating on the assumption that the hackers may still have access to the targeted phone communications between Trump and Vance, two people familiar with the matter said. One of the people said the campaign changed some security protocols, including rotating phone usage to avoid surveillance.
Removing hackers from communications networks has proven difficult. The hackers blend in with innocuous Internet traffic on routers and switches, making them difficult to detect, people familiar with the hackers’ methods told CNN.
The FBI had been monitoring Chinese hackers’ activity within communications networks since U.S. officials first learned of the intrusion, one of the people said. After The Wall Street Journal first reported the severity of the hack this month, sources said the hackers took additional steps to evade U.S. investigators, likening it to a game of cat and mouse.
The White House has convened an interagency team to oversee the response to hacks, but the action is typically limited to large-scale cybersecurity incidents, three U.S. officials familiar with the matter told CNN. spoke. The Washington Post first reported that the process was being activated.
Meanwhile, a Department of Homeland Security-led group of cybersecurity experts investigating major hacking incidents plans to investigate the root causes of China’s hacking activity, a DHS official told CNN.
At the National Diet Building, the issue of Chinese hacking is so sensitive that normally talkative members of Congress become silent when it is mentioned.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, who chairs the Intelligence Committee, told CNN earlier this month that “this is a very serious breach and the committee monitors it on a daily basis.” . When asked for further details, he repeated the same words and said he could not share anything more.
Given the extent to which China’s hacking efforts have penetrated U.S. communications networks, some U.S. allies are checking their own computer networks for signs of compromise. British authorities, for example, are on high alert for evidence of the hack’s impact on the UK, but so far have found nothing, a British official familiar with the matter told CNN.
China’s ongoing hacking operations mean that whether President Trump or Harris wins, the next administration is likely to inherit another major cybersecurity incident with major national security implications. I am doing it. When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the U.S. government was still in the throes of a sophisticated hack by Russian intelligence that penetrated software created by the technology company SolarWinds and breached multiple U.S. government agencies. was dealing with.
CNN’s Ted Barrett, Natasha Bertrand, Caitlan Collins and Kristen Holmes contributed reporting.
