Chinese Hackers May Be Reading Your Texts, FBI Says

A Chinese cyberattack has likely stolen data from more than 1 million customers, reports ABC News. The spies exploited weaknesses and hacked into the communications of AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies customers. In some cases, officials believe the hackers listened to live conversations and read private texts.

It is believed that the intent was to start wide and narrow down the focus to spy on prominent political figures. ABC notes that leaders in Trump and Harris’s campaigns were targeted. However, due to the unprecedented scope of the attack, security experts are urging all Americans to use encrypted messaging apps.

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Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told NBC News, “Encryption is your friend, whether it’s on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication. Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible.”

End-to-end encryption means that a message being sent is encrypted on the sender’s device and can only be decrypted by the receiver’s device. Apple’s iMessage has end-to-end encryption — but only if you are communicating with another Apple user. The same goes for Android texts. Messages sent between Apple devices and Androids do not have end-to-end encryption. Global powerhouse WhatsApp is one of the most secure services, according to PC Mag.

Per ABC News, officials “admitted they cannot say with certainty that China hackers have been fully kicked out of these telecommunications networks” so unless you are sure that the people you are texting with have the same device as you, your best bet to ensure privacy is using an app like Signal Private Messenger, Telegram or the aforementioned, WhatsApp.