China Possibly Hacking US “Lawful Access” Backdoor - Schneier on Security
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Chinese hackers (Salt Typhoon) penetrated the networks of US broadband providers, and might have accessed the backdoors that the federal government uses to execute court-authorized wiretap requests. Those backdoors have been mandated by law—CALEA—since 1994. It’s a weird story. The first line of the article is: “A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers.” This implies that the attack wasn’t against the broadband providers directly, but against one of the intermediary companies that sit between the government CALEA requests and the broadband providers. For years, the security community has pushed back against these backdoors, pointing out that the technical capability cannot differentiate between good guys and bad guys. And here is one more example of a backdoor access mechanism being targeted by the “wrong” eavesdroppers. Other news stories. Tags: backdoors, CALEA, China, cyberat
China Possibly Hacking US “Lawful Access” Backdoor The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Chinese hackers (Salt Typhoon) penetrated the networks of US broadband providers, and might have accessed the backdoors that the federal government uses to execute court-authorized wiretap requests. Those backdoors have been mandated by law—CALEA—since 1994. It’s a weird story. The first line of the article is: “A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers.” This implies that the attack wasn’t against the
related reading
- Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign \ Anthropicanthropic.com
- Citron Research | Executive Editor Andrew Left | Publishing Since 2001citronresearch.com
- U.S. government is 'biggest buyer' of zero-day vulnerabilities, report claims | CSO Onlinecsoonline.com
- FBI chief says Chinese hackers have infiltrated critical US infrastructure | China | The Guardiantheguardian.com
- Researchers Say China State-backed Hackers Breached a Digital Certificate Authoritythehackernews.com
- Inside Sophos' 5-Year War With the Chinese Hackers Hijacking Its Devices | WIREDwired.com
- China's Technological Playbookthecounterfactual.substack.com
- Behind the Facade of China’s Cyber Super-Regulatordigichina.stanford.edu
- Black Hat USA 2026 | The 'Breaking' News: The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incidentyoutube.com
- Cyber Safety Board Never Probed Causes of SolarWinds Breach — ProPublicapropublica.org
- Backdoor (computing) - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
- XZ Utils backdoor - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org