Chinese hackers breached US court wiretap systems: Report

Chinese hackers

accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems the federal govt uses for court-authorised wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Verizon Communications

, AT&T and

Lumen Technologies

are among the telecoms companies whose networks were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorised US requests for communications data, the Journal said. It said the hackers had also accessed other tranches of internet traffic.
China's foreign ministry responded on Sunday that it was not aware of the attack described in the report but said the US had "concocted a false narrative" to "frame" China in the past. "At a time when cybersecurity has become a common challenge for all countries around the world, this erroneous approach will only hinder the efforts of the international community to jointly address the challenge through dialogue and cooperation," the ministry said in a statement to Reuters.
Beijing has previously denied claims by the US govt and others that it has used hackers to break into foreign computer systems.

Lumen Technologies declined to comment, while Verizon and AT&T did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Journal said the attack was carried out by a Chinese hacking group with the aim of collecting intelligence. US investigators have dubbed it "Salt Typhoon".