'Salt Typhoon' prompts warning from security officials against text messaging

The cyberattack, nicknamed Salt Typhoon by Microsoft, has managed to infiltrate eight major telecommunication firms in the US, as per Metro UK.

Encrypted messaging has been advised by two US officials and a senior FBI official who requested not to be named, as well as executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Jeff Greene.

The suggestion was made by the officials for those users who want to minimise the chances of their data getting infiltrated.

“Our suggestion, what we have told folks internally, is not new here: Encryption is your friend, whether it’s on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication,” Greene told NBC News.

“Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible,” he added.

As for the senior FBI official who didn’t want to be named, he said: “People looking to further protect their mobile device communications would benefit from considering using a cellphone that automatically receives timely operating system updates, responsibly managed encryption and phishing resistant multi-factor authentication for email, social media and collaboration tool accounts”.

However, how do encrypted messages even work and how do they protect your data? To simply put, encrypted messages have a tool which converts information into scrambled text which can only be decoded through a “secret key”.

Encrypted messages prevent third parties or interceptors from accessing the texts as only the recipient has the decryption key to read it.

The senior US officials said that the hackers accessed three types of data and information. The first is call records or meta data followed by live phone calls and the third is the systems that telecommunications companies use in accordance with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).

In conclusion, the security officials have warned against using basic network text messaging, in its place, encrypted messaging apps should be used to maximise the protection of private data.