Satellite tv for pc communications firm Viasat is the most recent sufferer of China’s Salt Hurricane cyber-espionage group, which has beforehand hacked into the networks of a number of different telecom suppliers in america and worldwide.
Viasat gives satellite tv for pc broadband companies to governments worldwide and aviation, navy, vitality, maritime, and enterprise clients. Final month, the telecom big informed shareholders that it had roughly 189,000 broadband subscribers in america.
The corporate found the Salt Hurricane breach earlier this yr and has been working with federal authorities to analyze the assault, as Bloomberg first reported.
“Viasat and its impartial third-party cybersecurity accomplice investigated a report of unauthorized entry by way of a compromised gadget. Upon finishing a radical investigation, no proof was discovered to recommend any influence to clients,” Viasat informed BleepingComputer.
“Viasat engaged with authorities companions as a part of its investigation. As a result of delicate nature of knowledge sharing with authorities companions, we’re unable to offer additional particulars. Viasat believes that the incident has been remediated and has not detected any latest exercise associated to this occasion.”
Russian hackers additionally breached Viasat’s KA-SAT consumer-oriented satellite tv for pc broadband service in February 2022, wiping satellite tv for pc modems utilizing AcidRain knowledge wiper malware roughly one hour earlier than Russia invaded Ukraine.
The 2022 cyberattack impacted tens of 1000’s of broadband clients in Ukraine and Europe, together with modems controlling roughly 5,800 wind generators in Germany.
Salt Hurricane telecom breaches
Because the FBI and CISA confirmed in October, the Chinese language Salt Hurricane state hackers had breached a number of telecom suppliers (together with AT&T, Verizon, Lumen, Constitution Communications, Consolidated Communications, and Windstream) and different telecom firms in dozens of nations.
Whereas inside U.S. telecom networks, the attackers additionally accessed the U.S. legislation enforcement’s wiretapping platform and gained entry to the “personal communications” of a “restricted quantity” of U.S. authorities officers.
Earlier this month, NSA and CISA officers additionally tagged Comcast and Digital Realty as doubtlessly compromised in Salt Hurricane’s telecom assaults.
Salt Hurricane has been breaching authorities organizations and telecom firms since a minimum of 2019 and stored actively focusing on telecoms between December 2024 and January 2025, breaching extra telecommunications suppliers worldwide through unpatched Cisco IOS XE community gadgets.
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