Canada says Salt Typhoon hacked telecom firm via Cisco flaw

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and the FBI report that the Chinese state-sponsored group 'Salt Typhoon' exploited the critical Cisco IOS XE vulnerability CVE-2023-20198 to compromise at least three network devices at a Canadian telecommunications provider in February 2025, retrieving running configurations and modifying one to create a GRE tunnel for traffic collection; the bulletin also links Salt Typhoon activity to prior breaches of multiple global telcos, highlights ongoing reconnaissance targeting telecoms and other sectors, and urges immediate edge-device hardening and patching.