China Hack Enabled Vast Spying on U.S. Officials, Likely Ensnaring Thousands of Contacts

Hackers linked to Chinese intelligence used precision strikes to quietly compromise cellphone lines used by an array of senior national security and policy officials across the U.S. government in addition to politicians. This access allowed them to scoop up call logs, unencrypted texts and some audio from potentially thousands of Americans and others with whom they interacted. The emerging picture of the intrusion’s reach helps confirm the intelligence community’s concerns about the potentially dire national security consequences of the attack. Hackers burrowed deep into U.S. telecommunications infrastructure over eight months or more. With each layer of network infrastructure they unlocked, the Beijing-linked group studied how America’s communications wiring works without detection, carrying out targeted thefts.