Corporate investigators found evidence that Chinese hackers broke into an American telecommunications company in the summer of 2023, indicating the country’s attackers penetrated the U.S. communications system earlier than publicly known.
Investigators working for the telecommunications firm discovered last year that malware used by Chinese state-backed hacking groups was on the company’s systems for seven months starting in the summer of 2023, according to a document and two people familiar with the matter. The document, an unclassified report sent to Western intelligence agencies, doesn’t name the company where the malware was found and the people familiar with the matter declined to identify it.
The 2023 intrusion at an American telecommunications company came about a year before U.S. government officials and cybersecurity companies said they began spotting clues that Chinese hackers had penetrated many of the country’s largest phone and wireless firms. The U.S. government has blamed the later breaches on a Chinese state-backed hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon.
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