"Hackers weren’t able to monitor or intercept anything encrypted, according to the Times, which means that conversations over apps like Signal and Apple’s iMessage were probably protected. But end-to-end encryption over texts between Apple devices and Android devices, for instance, aren’t encrypted in the same way, meaning they were vulnerable to interception by Salt Typhoon, according to the Times.
(...)
As for the targets, the Post reports fewer than 150 people have been identified as having their text messages or phone calls monitored and the FBI has been in contact with them. Most of the people are in the Washington DC area, which makes sense if the hackers were interested in political targets. But 150 people can communicate with a lot of people, even in a short period, so the number of targets could be in the “millions,” according to Warner. You get the sense U.S. authorities have no real idea how many people have been impacted, given the scope of the intrusion.

The details about how the hackers were able to push so deeply into U.S. systems are still scarce, but it has something to do with the ways in which U.S. authorities wiretap suspects in this country with a court order. The monitoring of phone calls wasn’t 24/7, according to Warner, but he didn’t seem to elaborate on what that meant to the Times."

https://gizmodo.com/china-wiretaps-americans-in-worst-hack-in-our-nations-history-2000528424

#USA #CyberSecurity #StateHacking #Surveillance #PoliceState #China