White House: Salt Typhoon hacks possible because telecoms lacked basic security measures

The White House described the Salt Typhoon campaign in which likely state-affiliated Chinese actors breached at least nine U.S. telecom companies by obtaining administrator credentials (one account had access to over 100,000 routers), erasing logs, and targeting phones of high-value individuals in the Washington, D.C. area; the briefing emphasized systemic cybersecurity gaps in configuration, vulnerability management, network segmentation and information sharing and urged stronger sector-wide rules and guidance.