Chinese federal government hackers permeated the networks of numerous big US-based Internet service companies and might have accessed to systems utilized for court-authorized wiretaps of interactions networks, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. “People familiar with the matter” informed the WSJ that hackers breached the networks of business consisting of Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen (likewise referred to as CenturyLink).

“A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of US broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests,” the WSJ composed. “For months or longer, the hackers might have held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful US requests for communications data, according to people familiar with the matter.”

These “attackers also had access to other tranches of more generic Internet traffic,” according to the WSJ’s sources. The attack is being credited to a Chinese hacking group called Salt Typhoon.

The Washington Post reported on the hacking project the other day, explaining it as “an audacious espionage operation likely aimed in part at discovering the Chinese targets of American surveillance.” The Post report associated the details to United States federal government authorities and stated an examination by the FBI, other intelligence companies, and the Department of Homeland Security “is in its early stages.”

The Post report stated there are signs that China’s Ministry of State Security is associated with the attacks.

Verizon supposedly dealing with FBI

Verizon supposedly established a war space at its center in Ashburn, Virginia, where it is dealing with workers from the FBI, Microsoft, and Google subsidiary Mandiant.