Telco Security Is A Dumpster Fire And Everyone's Getting Burned
The Register, Friday, December 6th, 2024
Here's a front-page headline you won't see these days: CHINA'S SPIES ARE TAPPING OUR PHONES. Not that they're not - they are - but, like the environment, there's so much cybersecurity horror in the media that, yes, of course they are. And?
The story deserves screaming headlines everywhere, from national TV news down to the Windy Creek Pig Farmer Bugle. The raw facts are bad enough. Chinese state hackers have infiltrated US telco infrastructure so deeply that only major rebuilds can expel them. The reasonable inferences are worse. The US government has lost the ability to enforce the responsibilities of telcos, and that other democratic countries will be in a similar pickle.
America has plenty of institutional paranoia and ass-covering secrecy as a service. But it also has a history of getting things out into the open where its allies would much rather stay shtum. Good luck finding any politician in the UK prepared to talk about the same thing. Wherever you are, this story includes you.