- CISA issues recommendations for U.S. government communications
- Encourage government officials to lock down their devices
- Foreign actors previously found to have breached U.S. telecommunications networks
CISA urges “highly targeted” individuals in U.S. government or senior political positions to immediately review and implement strict security measures on their mobile devices.
This is after Major U.S. telecommunications companies suffer security breaches Early 2024, most likely originating from state-sponsored Chinese hackers.
Recent reports also confirm that the organization behind this attack, “Salt Typhoon,” has not been completely eradicated and is still lurking within the US telecommunications network.
lock mode
As part of its advisory, CISA also released Best Practice Guide For mobile communications, this includes instructions for using end-to-end encryption, Password managerFast Identity Online, a phishing defense authentication, and recommendations on how to migrate to SMS-based multi-factor authentication.
Recommended by China Iron and Steel Association iPhone users turn on “Lockdown Mode””, which severely restricts certain applications and makes many features unavailable to reduce the attack surface that attackers can exploit.
The scale of the attack is serious concern for any senior official, with major networks such as Verizon, AT&T and Lumen Technologies being found to have threat actors with access to their systems.
“Highly targeted individuals should assume that all communications between mobile devices, including government and personal devices, and Internet services are at risk of interception or manipulation,” CISA said.
Communications remain an attractive target for foreign actors, as a breach could result in significant disruption and loss of sensitive material.
U.S. communications have been particularly under attack this year, especially against government and political targets ahead of last month’s U.S. election. “Hacking and Leaking” Campaign attacks President-elect Trump Attempts to sabotage the campaign during the campaign resulted in two indictments against the suspect.
through Record