Viasat identified as victim in Chinese Salt Typhoon cyberespionage, Bloomberg News reports

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(Reuters) -Viasat Inc has been identified as a victim of the Chinese-linked Salt Typhoon cyberespionage operation during last year’s presidential campaign, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.

The breach at the satellite communications firm was discovered earlier this year and Viasat has been working with the government in the aftermath, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Viasat and its independent third-party cybersecurity partner investigated unauthorized access through a compromised device but found no evidence of customer impact, the company said in a statement.

“Viasat believes that the incident has been remediated and has not detected any recent activity related to this event,” the company said, adding that it was engaged with the government as part of its investigation.

U.S. officials have previously alleged that hackers targeted telecom companies such as Verizon, AT&T, Lumen, and others, stealing telephone audio intercepts along with a significant amount of call record data.

In December, the officials added a ninth unnamed telecom company to the list of entities compromised by the Salt Typhoon hackers and said that the Chinese operatives gained access to networks with broad and full access, enabling them to “geolocate millions of individuals, to record phone calls at will”.

Targets of Salt Typhoon reportedly included officials connected to the presidential campaigns of both Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

Chinese officials have previously dismissed the allegations as disinformation, asserting that Beijing “firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms”.

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City and Harshita Mary Varghese, Additional reporting by Surbhi Misra; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi)