The White House has just revealed that another telecoms firm has been hacked. 

According to the Associated Press, this is the ninth hacking of its kind.

The administration revealed, in early December 2024, that eight other hacks had taken place.

It would appear that China is behind the hacks - or, at least, this is what the White House is claiming.

The latest

The latest hacking incident was revealed on Friday by Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger, Fox News reports.

"On Friday, deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger told reporters that a ninth victim had been identified after the administration released guidance to companies about how to locate Chinese hackers in their networks," the outlet writes.

It continues, "The hackers compromised the networks of telecommunications companies to gather customer call records and access the private communications of a limited number of people, officials said."

According to Fox, the identity of the victims has yet to be released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

But, the outlet adds that "officials believe senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures are among the victims whose communications were accessed."

Background

In early December, the Biden White House revealed that at least eight U.S. telecom firms had been hacked by China.

At the time, the Associated Press reported:

Deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger offered new details about the breadth of the sprawling Chinese hacking campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. Neuberger divulged the scope of the hack a day after the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued guidance intended to help root out the hackers and prevent similar cyberespionage in the future.

Despite the guidance, the White House, according to the outlet, warned that "the number of telecommunication firms and countries impacted could still grow." And, now it has.

Neuberger, on Friday, explained why it is that the details are so scarce at the moment. The Associate Press reports:

Neuberger said Friday that officials did not yet have a precise sense how many Americans overall were affected by Salt Typhoon, in part because the Chinese were careful about their techniques, but that a “large number” were in the Washington-Virginia area.

According to the outlet, the White House, however, believes that the hackers' goal was to "to identify who owned the phones and, if they were 'government targets of interest,' spy on their texts and phone calls."