{"id":195244,"date":"2025-06-18T20:04:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T20:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/195244\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T20:04:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T20:04:11","slug":"hackers-targeted-satellite-internet-service-viasat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/195244\/","title":{"rendered":"Hackers Targeted Satellite Internet Service Viasat"},"content":{"rendered":"

PCMag editors select and review products independently<\/a>. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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A notorious Chinese state-sponsored hacking group may have also infiltrated satellite internet provider Viasat<\/a>, after breaching several US mobile carriers and ISPs.<\/p>\n

The group, \u201cSalt Typhoon,\u201d grabbed headlines last year for a sweeping<\/a> spying campaign that involved hacking numerous US telecommunication providers. Bloomberg now reports<\/a> the California-based Viasat has been identified as among the victims when a breach at the company was discovered earlier this year.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Viasat also confirmed it uncovered a hacking incident, but the company is refraining from going into details, citing the US government\u2019s involvement in the investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cViasat and its independent third-party cybersecurity partner investigated a report of unauthorized access through a compromised device,\u201d the satellite internet provider said. \u201cUpon completing a thorough investigation, no evidence was found to suggest any impact to customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cViasat believes that the incident has been remediated and has not detected any recent activity related to this event,\u201d the company added.<\/p>\n

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Chinese hackers might have targeted Viasat because the company serves the US government customers, in addition to many maritime and aviation-related subscribers. The US military also uses<\/a> Viasat\u2019s satellite service.\u00a0Last month, the company reported<\/a> having a total of 189,000 US-fixed broadband subscribers.<\/p>\n

The attempted hack of Viasat is another indicator of how brazen China\u2019s state-sponsored hacking has become. The breach was so bad that Salt Typhoon had the capability<\/a> to collect phone records on millions of Americans and spy on phones belonging to top politicians, reportedly including Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg adds that the FBI\u2019s investigation into Salt Typhoon has found the hacking impacted \u201csome 100 million records belonging to 1.3 million users, mostly in the Washington, DC area.\u201d Although Salt Typhoon appears to have gone dormant, US lawmakers and officials remain concerned that the Chinese hackers could strike again by targeting vulnerable systems in the country.<\/p>\n

As for Viasat, the company also suffered a separate hack in 2022 involving malware capable of wiping data from its modem and routers. The incident caused a massive outage and was later blamed<\/a> on Russian state-hackers attempting to disrupt internet services in Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3161],"tags":[79457,3082,79455,79456,53,16,15,79454],"class_list":{"0":"post-195244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-chinese-hackers","9":"tag-internet","10":"tag-salt-typhoon","11":"tag-satellite-internet-provider","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-viasat"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114706164468984100","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}