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Chinese Cyberespionage Group ‘Salt Typhoon’: Infiltrates U.S. National Guard Network
Image source: Shutterstock
Table of Contents
- Scope and Impact of the National Guard Breach
- Salt Typhoon’s Broader Cyber Threat: Telecoms and Metadata
- Coordinated Federal Response to Ongoing Salt Typhoon Campaign
- Sanctions and Diplomacy: U.S. Strikes Back
- Implications for Critical Infrastructure and National Security
1. Scope and Impact of the National Guard Breach
Between March and December 2024, Salt Typhoon successfully compromised a U.S. state’s Army National Guard’s internal network, capturing sensitive content such as inter-network traffic data and classified maps. Notably, the breach involved data from every other U.S. state and at least four U.S. territories, suggesting widespread lateral movement across interconnected systems (Reuters).
The DHS memo warns that the attack could significantly undermine regional cybersecurity, particularly because National Guard units often coordinate with state fusion centers. These centers form critical hubs for threat intelligence sharing between state, local, and federal agencies. With potentially compromised trust channels, threat detection and response capabilities may be degraded.
As of mid-2025, neither the National Guard nor the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued a formal statement about the incident.
2. Salt Typhoon’s Broader Cyber Threat: Telecoms and Metadata
The National Guard breach is part of a broader cyber campaign by Salt Typhoon targeting multiple sectors of U.S. critical infrastructure, notably telecommunications. In what has been described by Senator Mark R. Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as “the worst telecom hack in our nation’s history,” Salt Typhoon compromised over a dozen U.S. telecom companies in 2024. The attackers exploited trust relationships to move laterally through networks, enabling real-time eavesdropping on phone calls and widespread data exfiltration (The Washington Post).
These intrusions included access to millions of Americans’ call and text metadata—raising severe privacy and counterintelligence concerns (Foreign Policy). Analysts noted that the hackers took advantage of outdated and unsupported equipment, some of which may now require a wholesale replacement to fully remediate the breach.
3. Coordinated Federal Response to Ongoing Salt Typhoon Campaign
The scale and persistence of Salt Typhoon’s cyberespionage prompted rapid federal-level coordination. In October 2024, the White House initiated a “unified coordination group” involving deputy secretaries from federal agencies such as the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and CISA. This task force is solely focused on tracking Salt Typhoon’s activities and standardizing response efforts across the U.S. government (The Washington Post).
Officials emphasized that the group’s mission is not only response and containment, but also interagency visibility—an acknowledgment of the complex, cross-sector nature of modern cyberespionage campaigns.
4. Sanctions and Diplomacy: U.S. Strikes Back
As part of its response, the Biden administration imposed sanctions in January 2025 on multiple actors linked to Chinese cyber operations, including those affiliated with Salt Typhoon. Notable sanctions targeted Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology Co., a Chinese cybersecurity firm alleged to have supported the group, and Yin Kecheng, an individual hacker associated with China’s foreign spy agency and responsible for breaches at the U.S. Treasury Department (The Washington Post).
The sanctions mark a clear federal strategy to both punish and deter cyberespionage campaigns aimed at U.S. national security and critical infrastructure sectors.
While the Chinese government denies any involvement in these operations, the consistent targeting of U.S. military, telecommunications, and government entities by Salt Typhoon is intensifying bipartisan concerns on Capitol Hill about rising cyber tensions with Beijing.
5. Implications for Critical Infrastructure and National Security
The Salt Typhoon network breaches—in military, telecom, and federal settings—reveal systemic cybersecurity gaps in both public and private infrastructure across the United States. The ability for state-sponsored actors to persist undetected in critical networks for months underscores the need for:
- Segmented, zero-trust architectures in defense organizations
- Comprehensive network activity monitoring and anomaly detection
- Swift patch management and hardware lifecycle vigilance
- Enhanced public-private information sharing frameworks
With state National Guard units acting as frontline responders in both domestic emergencies and cyber incidents, ensuring the integrity of their infrastructure is paramount.
Salt Typhoon’s infiltration demonstrates the evolving nature of cyber threats to U.S. sovereignty, not merely in terms of espionage, but possibly sabotage in pre-conflict scenarios. Strengthening our digital borders has become just as critical as hardening our physical defenses.
