Trump faces unprecedented cyber challenges with Chinese hackers
China hacking threat
As President-elect Donald Trump enters his second term Monday, he’s facing down an unprecedented foreign threat: Chinese hackers.
In the last several years, three distinct Chinese hacking campaigns have occurred in the United States — even reportedly infiltrating U.S. government computers belonging to top Biden administration officials.
While China has long been a top cyber adversary for the U.S., over the course of the Biden administration it has become more dogged and ambitious than ever before, experts and U.S. officials say, building to what has become perhaps the biggest cyber challenge the U.S. has faced to date.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the risk of Chinese cyberattacks has gone up,” said Adam Segal, who served as a senior cybersecurity adviser in the State Department last year. “And Chinese capabilities have seemed to have notably increased over the last four years.”
The most recent breach, discovered in December, gave the hackers access to files from the Treasury Department. The department described the breach as a “major incident” and sanctioned a Chinese company for allegedly helping that country’s cyber programs. Another, called Salt Typhoon, included a massive compromise of telecommunications companies, including AT&T and Verizon, and gave the hackers access to the Trump and Harris campaigns’ phone calls last year, as well as the phone records of more than a million Americans. FBI Director Christopher Wray said last month it may prove to be the “most significant cyber espionage campaign in history.”
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