According to a report by The New York Times, Chinese government-linked hackers are believed to have targeted the phones of Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, amid a larger breach affecting U.S. telecommunications networks. The Trump campaign was notified this week that their phone numbers were among those compromised during a breach of the Verizon network.
Investigators are currently working to ascertain what data, if any, was accessed during this sophisticated cyberattack. The breach reportedly also involved other current and former government officials.
Both the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have confirmed they are investigating the unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure linked to actors affiliated with the People's Republic of China. However, neither agency named the Trump campaign in their public statements.
In response to the news, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, Steven Cheung, criticized the Biden administration and Kamala Harris, suggesting that their leadership had enabled foreign adversaries to target the campaign. The spokesperson did not directly confirm whether the phones used by Trump and Vance had been specifically targeted.
Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that a cyberattack associated with the Chinese government had breached several U.S. telecommunications companies, potentially gaining access to systems used by the federal government for court-approved wiretaps. This breach reportedly involved at least three telecommunications firms—AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies—and may have aimed to extract sensitive national security information.
Earlier this year, the Trump campaign disclosed that it had also been hacked, attributing the breach to Iranian actors who allegedly stole and disseminated sensitive internal documents. In September, the U.S. Justice Department unveiled criminal charges against three members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps for their involvement in hacking the Trump campaign. Officials claimed the hackers sought to undermine Trump's campaign and create discord within American society, potentially influencing the upcoming election on November 5.
With less than two weeks until the election, Trump and Harris find themselves in a tightly contested race, with polling indicating they are nearly tied both nationally and in key swing states that will determine the election's outcome.
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