Experts tell House panel SALT Typhoon exposed deep telecom vulnerabilities; call for infrastructure redesign

At a hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs, cybersecurity experts told members on March 27 that the SALT Typhoon espionage campaign exposed systemic weaknesses in U.S. telecommunications infrastructure and argued the nation needs a coordinated, large‑scale program to replace legacy systems.

The witnesses cited decades‑old rules and architectural choices that created the conditions for mass surveillance. “In 1994, Congress enacted something called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act or CALEA,” said Professor Matt Blaze of Georgetown Law, adding that CALEA “required virtually all switching equipment in the public telephone network must be designed with explicit backdoor capabilities to wiretap traffic.” Blaze said those requirements, combined with the virtualized, remotely‑managed nature of modern networks, expanded the attack surface and made large‑scale unauthorized surveillance more likely.

Why it matters: Committee members were told that SALT Typhoon’s operators used weaknesses in telecommunications…