China’s Salt Typhoon Hackers Infiltrate Canadian Telcos

In February 2025, Canada’s Centre for Cyber Security and the FBI uncovered a Chinese state-sponsored espionage campaign against Canada’s telecom sector. Salt Typhoon hackers leveraged a long-known Cisco IOS XE flaw (CVE‑2023‑20198) to compromise three telecom network devices, extract configuration files, and establish GRE tunnels for silent traffic interception and metadata collection. The intrusion allowed access to sensitive data like call records, subscriber activity, and potentially government communications. Agencies emphasized this was not an isolated incident: Salt Typhoon has similarly targeted U.S. and global telcos, and Canadian investigations reveal the campaign extends beyond telecoms, likely involving reconnaissance in other sectors . The advisory warns these cyber‑espionage operations will continue over the next two years unless organizations deploy urgent patches and strengthen edge‑device defences. Telecom firms are urged to update firmware, monitor network activity, and follow hardening guidance to thwart persistent threats.