Trump and Vance’s phone data targeted by Chinese hackers

Chinese hackers have targeted phone data belonging to Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, according to US media reports. But the environment of the campaign team of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris also came into their field of vision, reported the “New York Times” and the “Wall Street Journal”. It was unclear in the reports whether the hackers, with suspected ties to Chinese intelligence, were able to steal any data.

Data from mobile phone providers can be used to see, for example, who called whom, when and for how long, and with whom SMS messages were exchanged.

Attack on the Trump and Vance campaign team

The FBI only said that unauthorized access to the telecommunications infrastructure by actors with ties to China was being investigated. It was discovered weeks ago that a hacker group had broken into the systems of several American mobile phone providers.

The New York Times wrote that phones belonging to Trump and Vance were targeted by hackers in the attack on the telecommunications company Verizon. A Verizon spokesman said it was investigating reports of the attack and could not provide further information because the investigation is ongoing. A cyber attack on internal communications from Trump and Vance’s campaign team had already become known in the summer, which was attributed to hackers from Iran.