Salt Typhoon Unleashed: Chinese Cyber Spies Gone Wild in Global Hacking Spree

This is your Cyber Sentinel: Beijing Watch podcast.

Ting here, listeners, and if you thought your week was chaotic, imagine being on the front lines of US cyber defense. Over the past few days, Chinese-linked cyber activity—especially that infamous Salt Typhoon group—has surged into headlines and security dashboards everywhere. The FBI, the NSA, even Interpol, all agree: Salt Typhoon is outdoing itself, pulling off operations so broad and sophisticated that security chief Brett Leatherman just revealed the breaches hit at least 200 US companies and spanned 80 countries. The scope? Telecom, infrastructure, critical sectors—none are off limits. According to the Washington Post, the actual volume and diversity of data exposed was, quote, “mind-boggling.”

Now, let’s geek out on techniques: Salt Typhoon isn’t relying on tired old malware. They’re leveraging zero-day exploits bought off private markets, slipping into networks via vulnerabilities hiding in things like Microsoft Exchange, then living off the land—using legitimate admin tools already present to move deeper. Experts at SentinelOne point out the direct evolution of this strategy: instead of pure smash-and-grab, the campaign has gone stealth, targeting high-value personalities—think campaign staff for Trump, Harris, and Vance—while pulling metadata on millions in D.C.

It gets more tactical. This week, the NSA and UK’s NCSC reported Chinese actors adapting adversary-in-the-middle attacks, hijacking captive portals to redirect VIPs—like international diplomats—into custom phishing and malware traps. That’s the kind of precision work that should make any CISO double-check their traffic analytics.

Industries in the bullseye are increasingly critical: telecom firms, state governments, utilities, even the water sector. Case in point, that Def Con initiative that’s now rushing out free cyber tools for under-funded water utilities. Why? Because critical infrastructure attacks jumped 30% in just a year—roughly 13 attacks per second globally—with, according to Syteca, nation-state actors like China behind nearly 60% of energy sector incidents.

On attribution, the US isn’t shy anymore. FBI and NSA statements leave little doubt: Chinese APTs are acting with state backing, and private Chinese tech firms are facilitating breaches, often via civil-military fusion. This isn’t cybercrime for hire; this is strategic, long-game espionage.

The international response is finally catching up. In August alone, CISA issued emergency directives forcing agencies to patch vulnerabilities within days, the FCC voted to overhaul submarine cable rules, and Interpol-led global busts brought down parts of the OPERA1ER ring—though, candidly, the cat-and-mouse game never really ends.

At the strategic level, the real drama is about resilience. You do not wait for a wake-up call: map every digital asset, know your network dependencies, and kill the “set-it-and-forget-it” mentality. CISA and NIST are pushing for continuous asset validation, SBOMs—software bills of materials—for everything, and security by design at every supply chain link.

Here’s my advice: Segment your critical systems. Patch like you floss—daily and thoroughly. Practice incident response with red-team war games. And invest in both human intelligence and AI analytics, because the bad actors already are. If you work in telecom, government, water, or energy—triple your defenses and scrutinize third-party connections deeply.

Thanks for tuning into Cyber Sentinel: Beijing Watch. Don’t forget to subscribe for weekly debriefs that are sharper than a dumpling chef’s cleaver. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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