Cisco Hacked, Data Sacked: China's Salt Typhoon Strikes Again!

This is your Digital Dragon Watch: Weekly China Cyber Alert podcast. Hey there, I'm Ting, and welcome to Digital Dragon Watch, your weekly dose of China cyber alerts. Let's dive right in because the past few days have been anything but quiet. China's Salt Typhoon spy crew has been on a roll, exploiting vulnerabilities in Cisco devices to compromise at least seven devices linked to global telecom providers and other organizations. This includes a US internet service and telecommunications provider, a US affiliate of a significant UK-based telecom provider, an Italian ISP, and two other telecommunications firms in South Africa and Thailand[1][4]. The intrusions happened between December 2024 and January 2025, with the Chinese government snoops attempting to exploit more than 1,000 Cisco-made boxes. They used two critical privilege escalation vulnerabilities in Cisco's tech: CVE-2023-20198 and CVE-2023-20273. These bugs were patched by Cisco in 2023, but it seems not everyone got the memo[1][4]. Salt Typhoon also targeted universities, including UCLA, Loyola Marymount University, Utah Tech University, and California State University, likely to access research related to telecommunications, engineering, and technology[1][4]. The US government isn't sitting idly by. The FY 2025 National Defense Authorization Act includes provisions addressing potential security risks linked to Chinese-origin technology. Section 162 builds on the American Drone Security Act, and there are directives to assess the risk of data collection and misuse posed by personal mobile devices and applications tied to China[2]. Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber Anne Neuberger highlighted the severity of these attacks, stating that they give the Chinese government broad and full access to Americans' data and the capability to geolocate millions of individuals and record phone calls at will[5]. So, what can you do to protect yourself? First, patch those Cisco devices if you haven't already. Second, be cautious with personal mobile devices and applications linked to China. And third, stay informed. The threat landscape is constantly evolving, and staying ahead of the curve is key. That's all for today. Stay safe out there, and we'll catch you on the flip side. This is Ting, signing off. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.