China's Salt Typhoon recorded top American officials' calls, says White House

Chinese cyberspies recorded "very senior" US political figures' calls, according to White House security boss Anne Neuberger.

Neuberger, America's deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, spoke at the Manama Dialogue regional security conference over the weekend. During the Bahrain event, she told reporters that the Salt Typhoon campaign was a "focused" operation targeting high-level people in politics for espionage purposes.

"We believe ... the actual number of calls that they took, recorded and took, was really more focused on very senior political individuals," Neuberger said, according to media reports. She did not disclose who the snoops targeted.

During a media briefing last week, Neuberger confirmed eight US telecom providers had been compromised by Salt Typhoon along with organizations in "dozens of countries around the world."

"We believe this is a Chinese espionage program focused, again, on key government officials, and corporate intellectual property," Neuberger said at the time.

This briefing came a day after FBI and US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security (CISA) officials told reporters that while the Chinese government-backed spies did steal a large amount of records, including Americans' metadata, they also swiped a much smaller number of "private communications of a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in the government or political activities," according to a senior FBI official. "This would have contained call and text contents."

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Salt Typhoon also compromised wiretapping systems used by law enforcement – although that wasn't the focus of the spying intrusions, the official added. "Just want to set the record straight that PRC started this campaign with much broader aims," the agent said.

Neuberger's comments over the weekend come as the US Senate Commerce subcommittee gears up for a Wednesday hearing on "Communications Networks Safety and Security" that will investigate the risk posed by cyberspies and other digital criminals infiltrating American telecom systems.

Salt Typhoon, and the larger threat posed by China, are expected to eat up much of the agenda, and Tim Donovan, president and CEO of the Competitive Carriers Association, is slated to testify before the subcommittee. ®