Chinese hackers targeted data from the phones used by former president Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, a New York Times report said citing people familiar with the matter. Investigators are yet to determine what communication data was taken or observed by the hackers.
“The type of information on phones used by a presidential candidate and his running mate could be a gold mine for an intelligence agency: Who they called and texted, how often they communicated with certain people, and how long they talked to those people could be highly valuable to an adversary like China. That sort of communications data could be even more useful if hackers could observe it in real time,” the NYT report said.
The Donald Trump campaign was informed that Trump and Vance’s phones were among a number of people inside and outside of the government whose phone numbers had been targeted through the infiltration of Verizon phone systems.
Data about the communications of a presidential and vice-presidential candidate — even absent the content of the calls and messages — could also help an adversary like China better identify and target people in Trump’s inner circle for influence operations, the report said.
A Trump campaign spokesman did not directly address whether the phones used by Trump and Vance had been targeted. But in a statement, the spokesman, Steven Cheung, criticized the White House and Vice President Kamala Harris and sought to blame them for allowing a foreign adversary to target the campaign.
Earlier this year, security officials discovered the presence in American telecommunications systems of a China-affiliated hacking group called Salt Typhoon by Western cybersecurity experts. But investigators determined only recently that the hackers were targeting specific phone numbers, the officials said.
The investigation into the extent of the hacking and any national security damage is in its early stages. Whether such an attack could monitor or record phone conversations is difficult to know, and whether the hackers could read or intercept texts, for example, would depend in no small part on which messaging apps the targets used and how that data moved over the phone company’s systems.
