In an effort to stop the ongoing Chinese cyberattacks on American telecommunication networks, the FBI is reaching out to the public for information on the cyber-espionage group Salt Typhoon. The anti-American cyber-campaign began in 2022 and poses a growing threat to the privacy of U.S. citizens and to U.S. national security.

What is Salt Typhoon?

Salt Typhoon is a state-sponsored, Chinese-funded group of hackers, who have led a widespread cyber-spying effort targeting U.S. telecom networks in both the public and private sector. It is stated to be one of the most sophisticated cyberattack campaigns ever launched against U.S. networks.

Victims of the attack include customers of Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies, as well as other smaller telecom networks. Salt Typhoon has gained access to the phone calls, text messages, and other communication data of many Americans, and even accessed federal agencies’ wiretapping operations. The attackers also obtained private data from Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election.

What’s Next?

According to CrowdStrike’s Global Threat Report, Chinese state-sponsored cyberattacks are steadily increasing. Former member of the Cyber Safety Review Board, Dmitri Alperovitch, stated that the Salt Typhoon attacks could have major impacts on American national security if not stopped. But what makes the attacks so complex? Aaron Shraberg, a senior intelligence analyst at Flashpoint, a cyber-threat intelligence platform, states,

“Salt Typhoon has demonstrated stealth and persistence, meaning it is difficult to identify the threat on networks. The group has demonstrated proficiency in various tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), like living off the land (LoTL), to use legitimate tools and blend in with network traffic to avoid discovery.”

The FBI has stated its desire to end these attacks as soon as possible and to increase national cybersecurity. In a bulletin released April 24, 2025, they asked for the public’s assistance, and offered a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the discovery of the identities of the threat actors involved. The bulletin reads,

“FBI maintains its commitment to protecting the US telecommunications sector and the individuals and organizations targeted by Salt Typhoon by identifying, mitigating, and disrupting Salt Typhoon’s malicious cyber activity. If you have any information about the individuals who comprise Salt Typhoon or other Salt Typhoon activity, we would particularly like to hear from you.”

The FBI is also working directly with the telecom companies involved in order to bring an end to the attacks.

Peace of Mind with ALTERNcloud

Properly managing cybersecurity risks is paramount for businesses and consumers alike. That’s why it’s important to have a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) or HPC (Hosted Private Cloud) service you trust.

Virtual Private Cloud

Develop and deploy powerful websites and apps with ALTERNcloud’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) packages. With a multi-tenant advanced Cloud configuration, ALTERNcloud’s VPC Medium provides customers with a fully virtualized environment and immediate provisioning. Featuring 80 shared and dedicated vCPUs, an extensive compute templates library, and a Cloud core managed by ALTERNcloud, VPC Medium grants users advanced self-service versatility.

Hosted Private Cloud

ALTERNcloud’s hosted private cloud provides a local cloud server for your business or corporation, allowing your company to store data securely and confidently.

• Our HPC Starter includes a Cloud Core cluster of three redundant compute nodes based on Intel Xeon E3, comes with 128GB of RAW memory, 153GB of RAM dedicated for compute. Also included is 960GB high availability storage (redundant, fast NVMe SSD), network connectivity of 1TB egress per month, and access to five usable floating IP addresses.

• Our HPC Medium offering provides the same service as the HPC Starter but with higher resources for companies with greater needs: 384GB of RAW memory, 339GB of RAM for compute, and 3.2TB of high availability storage, and 4TB of monthly egress per month.