A former FBI official claims that it's likely every American has been impacted by a Chinese-state-sponsored cyberattack.
International law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and National Security Agency, issued a China's intelligence services, which include units in the People’s Liberation Army and Ministry of State Security.
Through the information gathered during the cyberattacks, the Chinese intelligence services can "identify and track their targets’ communications and movements around the world."
Cynthia Kaiser, a former high-ranking official in the FBI's cyber division, told the Salt Typhoon cyberattack had unprecedented access to phone calls being placed by Americans.
"They had full rein access," Nicoletti, said. "So, you know, your grandmother calling you to remind you to pick up groceries was not a targeted person and they're gonna listen into that call. But Trump, Vance, Kamala Harris, and dozens of other U.S. government officials were specifically targeted."
Nicoletti said the Salt Typhoon hackers "established a foothold and exfiltrated data for five years," which is "almost unprecedented."
Yet the cybersecurity expert says his greatest concern is not what Salt Typhoon may target in the future, but whether the group remains embedded inside companies and agencies that still haven’t discovered the intrusion.
"My biggest concern is they're still in various organizations and undetected," he said. "So the thing that I worry about is not the next time that these guys hack somebody, it's what they're doing currently and who they're in."
When discussing the cyberattack in December 2024, then-deputy national security advisor Anne Neuberger said the hackers worked to identify the owners of various devices, then spy on phone calls and text messages if they were "government targets of interest."
Fox News Digital's Landon Mion contributed to this report.