Chinese hackers have breached US court wiretapping systems, the WSJ reports

(Reuters) – Chinese hackers have accessed the networks of U.S. broadband providers and obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies are among the telecommunications companies whose networks were breached in the recently discovered breach, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The hackers may have had access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-approved U.S. requests for communications data, the paper said. It said the hackers also accessed other parts of the internet traffic.

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Beijing has in the past rejected claims by the U.S. government and others that it used hackers to break into foreign computer systems.

Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Wall Street Journal said the attack was carried out by a Chinese hacking group with the aim of gathering information. U.S. investigators called it “Salt Typhoon.”

Earlier this year, U.S. law enforcement agencies dismantled a major Chinese hacking group nicknamed “Flax Typhoon,” months after confronting Beijing over widespread cyber espionage in a campaign dubbed “Volt Typhoon.”

(Reporting by Shivani Tanna in the Bengaluru and Beijing newsrooms; Editing by Edmund Klamann)