This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

Listeners, it’s Ting—yes, your go-to for everything China, cyber-intrigue, and flaming-hot hacking updates. You want this week in America’s cyber defense? Buckle in, because Dragon’s Code has written a blockbuster chapter.

This week, Salt Typhoon, the Chinese cyberespionage crew backed by China’s Ministry of State Security, didn’t just knock on our digital doors—they blew them off the hinges. According to the FCC, Salt Typhoon breached the wiretap request systems at dozens of US telecom companies. That’s right, the lawful intercept tools that let law enforcement snoop on suspected criminals? Chinese hackers found a way to use these against us, targeting everyone from candidates like President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance to campaign teams of Kamala Harris. Imagine Xi Jinping’s agents eavesdropping on America’s latest campaign strategy sessions—makes Watergate look analog.

How’d they do it? Methodology: sophisticated spear phishing, zero-day exploits in obscure telecom systems, and a little old-school credential stuffing. Chinese operators leaned on exploiting vulnerabilities in Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliance firewalls—those beefy gatekeepers supposedly guarding government and private infrastructure alike. According to The Record, their scan-and-exploit routine hit network perimeters, with some success in government and defense contractor domains.

Attribution wasn’t just guesswork. The FBI, working alongside CISA, followed forensic breadcrumbs—unique malware signatures, command-and-control infrastructure bouncing through .cn domains, and operational overlap with known Salt Typhoon campaigns. Key evidence included identical malware samples found across 600 organizations in over 80 countries, but traced right back to this Chinese crew.

So, did Uncle Sam take it lying down? Absolutely not. Emergency patches from Cisco flew out the door; telecoms isolated affected systems, and the FBI started a rolling notification campaign to compromised organizations. The patchwork, per FCC Chair Brendan Carr and NIST’s tech team, included tighter network segmentation and forced multi-factor authentication. But the FCC threw drama into the mix—next month, they’ll vote to reverse some security requirements put in after the attacks. Cybersecurity pros like Jessica Rosenworcel, former FCC Chair, think rolling back these protections now is like locking your doors after the burglar leaves, then removing the locks altogether.

Let’s talk lessons. First, no law-enforcement tool is too mundane for foreign cyber ops; second, never underestimate persistence—Salt Typhoon spent months mapping systems before striking. Experts like NIST’s Dr. Sonia Lin say automation, AI-driven monitoring, and continuous systems audit are now “non-negotiable” in this new normal, while infosec consultant Marcus Flynn insists public-private threat info sharing must shift from monthly memos to real-time alerts.

And the political cyber chessboard just keeps escalating. US firms are under pressure to ditch all gear with Chinese components—Huawei, ZTE, you name it. Even old systems, previously authorized, made the new blacklist. Millions of online listings got swept out overnight, raising cries from businesses and sparking snoozy legal protests from the usual suspects in Beijing.

That’s the week’s highlight reel: advanced Chinese cyber tactics, strategic hits on American infrastructure, proof-backed attribution, a rapidly adapting defense, and a policy tug-of-war that keeps even me, Ting, caffeinated and wide-eyed at midnight.

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