Cyber Attack on America: Before the presidential and vice-presidential elections in America, a group of Chinese hackers has allegedly breached the data related to the candidates. Chinese hackers group has targeted the communication devices of Donald Trump, Kamala Harris and JD Vance. Let us tell you that the Chinese cyber group that tried this hacking against America has been named ‘Salt Typhoon’. However, it is not yet clear how much data this group has stolen.
According to the New York Times, Salt Typhoon has infiltrated the telecommunication network and tried to access important data of many other service providers including Verizon. It was told that Donald Trump’s campaign along with Kamala Harris and her partner Tim Walz are also the target of Salt Typhoon.
What does salt typhoon mean?
According to the report, American federal agencies are trying to find out the extent of damage caused to America by Typhoon Salt. Actually, Microsoft’s cyber security team has named this group of Chinese hackers as Salt Typhoon. Microsoft calls Chinese hackers ‘typhoons’. At the same time, it uses the word ‘Sandstorm’ for Iranian hackers and ‘Blizzard’ for Russian hackers. However, for Chinese hackers, the purpose of associating the word Salt with Typhoon is to show it as a counter intelligence rather than a cyber crime involving corporate data theft or financial fraud.
Why were politicians targeted?
According to the New York Times report, the purpose of the Salt Typhoon attacks is to gather intelligence information about American assets and institutions important during the elections. In view of this, Salt Typhoon has targeted the phone numbers associated with politicians and their employees as well as government people.
At the same time, FBI and Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency have issued a statement considering this as a threat and said that collaborative efforts are being made with private companies to further strengthen cyber security.