According to a new report published, Chinese hackers (backed by the government) managed to gain access to the systems of telecommunications companies and steal the content of text messages of “geopolitical interest” to Beijing.
FireEye researchers said the Chinese hacking group is called APT41 . The hackers used a malware called “Messagetap” to gain access to telecom service provider servers that are responsible for sending and storing text messages. However, the researchers did not name the telecom company that was compromised.
The malware was used to identify the content of text messages. It used keywords that displayed content of “geopolitical interest” to China. In addition, the software searched for phone numbers of specific individuals from a database.
FireEye researchers did not disclose which countries or individuals were affected by the breaches. China has been accused many times of spying on other countries. The US has openly said that the Chinese company Huawei is a threat to America's national security and that its equipment is used for espionage. Huawei, for its part, has repeatedly denied that it cooperates with the Chinese government.
Some of the keywords used by Chinese hackers to search for this content include names of political leaders, military and secret organizations, as well as political movements that oppose the Chinese government.
Text messages containing some of the keywords or phone numbers were stored , allowing hackers to access them.
In addition, Chinese hackers gained access to call records and monitored phone numbers as well as the time and duration of calls. The hackers' targets were high-ranking officials of foreign governments, organizations, etc.
Messagetap, the software used by APT41 to steal the content of text messages, shows that the group is constantly evolving methods .
“Access to organizations such as telecommunications providers enables Chinese intelligence agencies to obtain sensitive data on a wide range of important topics,” one of the researchers. The worrying thing is that hackers could breach any telecommunications company and steal even more data.
