Salt Typhoon Slams US: China's Epic Hack Puts POTUS Data in Peril

This is your Red Alert: China's Daily Cyber Moves podcast.

Hey listeners, it’s Ting here, your bionic translator for all things China, cyber, and chaos. No time for small talk—we are on Red Alert after a wild three-day cyber siege straight from the cutting edge of Beijing's digital war room. Buckle in, I’ll take you through every breach, bot, and bit-flipping move since Wednesday.

So, first up, it’s all about Salt Typhoon. That’s the codenamed brainchild of China's top cyber spooks, now officially public enemy number one, at least in America’s switches and routers. According to The New York Times and SecurityWeek, this campaign made landfall last week but today hit its peak: U.S. telecoms, transportation grids, even government backbone—Salt Typhoon is burrowed deeper than your college roommate’s ramen habit. If you thought your data was private, think again. Even President Trump and Vice President JD Vance got swept up in the heist, with Chinese hackers reportedly nabbing personal data from almost every American alive. That’s not hyperbole; that’s investigators talking.

Let’s fly through the timeline. On Wednesday, emergency alerts rippled from CISA and the FBI: confirmed penetration of three U.S. Tier-1 telecom providers. Thursday, Tenable and Homeland Security Newswire reported that “countermeasures activated” means every IT admin with a pulse was up patching and isolating. By Friday afternoon, law enforcement unsealed indictments on seven Chinese nationals linked not just to Salt Typhoon but their evil twin Volt Typhoon, the crew aimed at physical infrastructure. Guam’s power grid, U.S. ports, military comms—nothing was off the table.

The real kicker? CISA’s latest, just hot off the press this morning, implies the breach may still be active. They’re warning: “Assume ongoing compromise until proven otherwise.” Every CISO in Silicon Valley is either upgrading firewalls or meditating in a dark room. FBI, for their part, leaned hard into public advisories; the active directive is: hunt persistence, log everything, kill legacy credentials, and be ready for zero trust by sundown.

Immediate defensive moves for anyone running a system: Patch vulnerable edge devices—especially Cisco, legacy Windows servers, and anything with exposed remote access. Strengthen incident response procedures, and, fun fact, network segmentation is suddenly sexy again. Oh, and if you’re running any industrial control system, CISA wants you checking for CVE-2025-42957; that’s the one hackers are loving right now.

Now, what’s next if escalation continues? Worst case, cyber pre-positioning lets China kill the lights in military zones, disrupt supply chains, or trigger nationwide panic if tensions over Taiwan spike. U.S. intelligence believes the goal is “access on demand” for Beijing—like leaving keys under the mat for your least favorite neighbor.

Final hot take before I sign off: This isn’t a hack, it’s a marathon trespass—China’s proven it won’t leave even after being outed. Congressional leaders are already moving to renew the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. Expect more flash alerts from CISA, maybe some regulatory teeth for telecoms and utilities soon.

That’s the pulse from Ting—your hacker in the clouds, bringing you the fun side of today’s digital hurricane. Thanks for tuning in, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you stream your cyber fix. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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