Canada says telcos have been breached in China-linked espionage hacks

The Canadian authorities and the FBI say they’re conscious of malicious exercise concentrating on telecommunication corporations throughout Canada, attributing the intrusions to the China-backed hacking group Salt Hurricane.

In a joint advisory out late Friday, the feds stated at the least one unnamed Canadian telco was hacked in mid-February this 12 months, through which hackers manipulated three Cisco-made routers to permit stealthy site visitors assortment from its community.

The feds say that separate investigations counsel that Salt Hurricane’s concentrating on is “broader than simply the telecommunications sector.”

Salt Hurricane, energetic since at the least late 2024, beforehand focused U.S. telephone giants and web suppliers, and extra lately datacenter hosts, as a part of a broad espionage marketing campaign aimed toward gathering intelligence on senior U.S. authorities officers. Salt Hurricane is one in every of a number of China-linked hacking teams considered making ready for China to launch a possible future invasion of Taiwan by 2027.

The Canadian-FBI joint advisory stated the hackers will “virtually actually” persist in concentrating on Canadian organizations “over the following two years.”