Chinese hack of US telcos prompts White House meeting

Increasing concerns regarding the Chinese cyberespionage attack against U.S. telecommunications firms AT&T, Lumen Technologies, and Verizon — which led to the compromise of devices belonging to President-elect Donald Trump and other key Republican and Democrat figures — have prompted telco executives and U.S. national security officials to convene at the White House to tackle the more robust cyber defenses for the telecommunications sector and enhanced intelligence sharing, CNN reports.

Such an intrusion, which was noted to have involved attackers being deeply ingrained into certain telco networks, was regarded by Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner, D-Va., to be the "worst telecom hack" in the U.S., with threat actors likely to have spied on significantly more individuals than reported by the FBI. While China has repeatedly rejected the alleged targeting of U.S. networks, Chinese state-sponsored threat actors "will not and are not stopping because it is part of their overarching national objectives, and cyber has become one of their most powerful levers of national power," said U.S. Cyber Command Executive Director Morgan Adamski.