WASHINGTON — A sprawling Chinese espionage campaign hacked a ninth U.S. telecom firm, a top White House official said Friday.

The Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. The White House earlier this month said the attack affected at least eight telecommunications companies and dozens of nations.

Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, told reporters Friday that a ninth victim was identified after the administration released guidance to companies about how to hunt for Chinese culprits in their networks.

The update from Neuberger is the latest development in a massive hacking operation that alarmed national security officials, exposed cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the private sector and laid bare China’s hacking sophistication.

The hackers compromised the networks of telecommunications companies to obtain customer call records and gain access to the private communications of “a limited number of individuals.” Although the FBI has not publicly identified any of the victims, officials believe senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures are among those whose communications were accessed.

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

Officials believe the goal of the hackers was to identify who owned the phones and, if they were “government targets of interest,” spy on their texts and phone calls, she said.

The FBI said most of the people targeted by the hackers are “primarily involved in government or political activity.”

Neuberger said the episode highlighted the need for required cybersecurity practices in the telecommunications industry, something the Federal Communications Commission is to take up at a meeting next month.

“We know that voluntary cybersecurity practices are inadequate to protect against China, Russia and Iran hacking of our critical infrastructure,” she said.

The Chinese government has denied responsibility for the hacking.
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TOKYO — Japan Airlines reported a cyberattack on Thursday that caused delays to domestic and international flights but later said it had found and addressed the cause.

The airline, Japan’s second biggest after All Nippon Airways (ANA), said 24 domestic flights had been delayed by more than half an hour.

Public broadcaster NHK said problems with the airline’s baggage check-in system had caused delays at several Japanese airports but no major disruption was reported.

“We identified and addressed the cause of the issue. We are checking the system recovery status,” Japan Airlines (JAL) said in a post on social media platform X.

“Sales for both domestic and international flights departing today have been suspended. We apologize for any inconvenience caused,” the post said.

A JAL spokesperson told AFP earlier the company had been subjected to a cyberattack.

Japanese media said it may have been a so-called DDoS attack aimed at overwhelming and disrupting a website or server.

Network disruption began at 7:24 a.m. Thursday (2224 GMT Wednesday), JAL said in a statement, adding that there was no impact on the safety of its operations.

Then “at 8:56 a.m., we temporarily isolated the router (a device for exchanging data between networks) that was causing the disruption,” it said.

Report on January collision

JAL shares fell as much as 2.5% in morning trade after the news emerged, before recovering slightly.

The airline is just the latest Japanese firm to be hit by a cyberattack.

Japan’s space agency JAXA was targeted in 2023, although no sensitive information about rockets or satellites was accessed.

The same year one of Japan’s busiest ports was hit by a ransomware attack blamed on the Russia-based Lockbit group.

In 2022, a cyberattack at a Toyota supplier forced the top-selling automaker to halt operations at domestic plants.

More recently, the popular Japanese video-sharing website Niconico came under a large cyberattack in June.

Separately, a transport ministry committee tasked with probing a fatal January 2024 collision involving a JAL passenger jet released an interim report on Wednesday blaming human error for the incident that killed five people.

The collision at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport was with a coast guard plane carrying six crew members — of whom five were killed — that was on mission to deliver relief supplies to a quake-hit central region of Japan.

According to the report, the smaller plane’s pilot mistook an air traffic control officer’s instructions to mean authorization had been given to enter the runway.

The captain was also “in a hurry” at the time because the coast guard plane’s departure was 40 minutes behind schedule, the report said.

The traffic controller failed to notice the plane had intruded into the runway, oblivious even to an alarm system warning against its presence.

All 379 people on board the JAL Airbus escaped just before the aircraft was engulfed in flames.
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TEHRAN, IRAN — Iran’s top council responsible for safeguarding the internet voted Tuesday to lift a ban on the popular messaging application WhatsApp, which has been subject to restrictions for over two years, state media reported. 

“The ban on WhatsApp and Google Play was removed by unanimous vote of the members of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace,” the official IRNA news agency said. 

The council is headed by the president, and its members include the parliament speaker, the head of the judiciary and several ministers. 

It was not immediately clear when the decision would come into force. 

‘Restrictions … achieved nothing but anger’

The move has sparked a debate in Iran, with critics of the restrictions arguing the controls were costly for the country.  

“The restrictions have achieved nothing but anger and added costs to people’s lives,” presidential adviser Ali Rabiei said on X Tuesday. 

“President Masoud Pezeshkian believes in removing restrictions and does not consider the bans to be in the interest of the people and the country. All experts also believe that this issue is not beneficial to the country’s security,” Vice President Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday. 

Lifting restrictions ‘a gift to enemies’

Others, however, warned against lifting the restrictions.  

The reformist Shargh daily on Tuesday reported that 136 lawmakers in the 290-member parliament sent a letter to the council saying the move would be a “gift to [Iran’s] enemies.”  

The lawmakers called for allowing access to restricted online platforms only “if they are committed to the values of Islamic society and comply with the laws of” Iran.  

Iranian officials have in the past called for the foreign companies that own popular international apps to introduce representative offices in Iran. 

Meta, the American giant that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has said it had no intention of setting up offices in the Islamic republic, which remains under U.S. sanctions. 

Iranians have over the years grown accustomed to using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to bypass internet restrictions.  

Other popular social media platforms, including Facebook, X and YouTube, remain blocked after being banned in 2009. 

Telegram was also banned by a court order in April 2018. 

Instagram and WhatsApp were added to the list of blocked applications following nationwide protests that erupted after the September 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini.  

Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, was arrested for an alleged breach of Iran’s dress code for women. 

Hundreds of people, including dozens of security personnel, were killed in the subsequent months-long nationwide protests, and thousands of demonstrators were arrested. 

Pezeshkian, who took office in July, had vowed during his campaign to ease the long-standing internet restrictions. 

in the past several years, Iran has introduced domestic applications to supplant popular foreign ones. 
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