Mitigating Salt Typhoon Router Hacks with QuSmart.AI’s Perfect Secrecy
Tracy Levine, QuSmart.AI Co-Founder, CEO/CAIO
In a world where data breaches and sophisticated cyberattacks are on the rise, protecting sensitive information is more critical than ever. Recently, hackers successfully infiltrated AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies networks, it is thought, by reconfiguring Cisco routers, allowing them to exfiltrate sensitive data without detection. The breach raised serious questions about their security postures and underscored the importance of robust encryption and network security.
What if the companies had used QuSmart.AI’s Perfect Secrecy solutions? With quantum secure encryption for data at rest, in transit, and streaming, QuSmart.AI could have stopped and mitigated much of the damage from the attack. Here’s how.
Perfect Secrecy for Data and Control Planes: Closing Gaps in Network Security
In attacks like Salt Typhoon, where hackers gain unauthorized access to network devices, securing both the data and control planes is critical to preventing data breaches and system reconfigurations. QuSmart.AI’s Perfect Secrecy offers a comprehensive solution to protect both layers of communication and infrastructure.
Starting with the data plane, QuSmart.AI encrypts all data with perfect secrecy, ensuring that even if a router is compromised and data is leaked, it can never be decrypted. Hackers may record the data, but without access to the encryption keys, it becomes completely useless. This pre-obfuscation of data renders it impossible for attackers to extract any valuable information, even if they manage to compromise the network.
For a more complete solution, QuSmart.AI’s Perfect Secrecy can also be applied to the control plane. This means that all control plane communications—used to manage and configure routers—are encrypted with quantum-secure encryption. Even if attackers gain “root” access to the router, they will be unable to change settings or interact with the control systems because their access to the control plane would be blocked by the encryption. Root access alone would not grant control, rendering the attack ineffective.
By applying perfect secrecy to both the data and control planes, QuSmart.AI ensures that:
- Data in transit remains encrypted and protected, even if it passes through compromised routers.
- Control plane communications are encrypted, preventing unauthorized access or reconfiguration of network devices.
- Data theft is rendered impossible, as intercepted streams cannot be decrypted without the unique, one-time-use encryption keys.
This dual-layer protection secures both data and control operations, ensuring that even in sophisticated attacks like Salt Typhoon, the hackers’ efforts would be futile.
Stopping Credential-Based Attacks: How QuSmart.AI’s Quantum Secure Channels Block SQL Injections
One of the most common and dangerous attack vectors for compromising network devices like routers is by attacking the credential sources themselves, such as databases that store passwords or keys. Hackers often use SQL injection to exploit vulnerabilities in these systems, gaining unauthorized access to credentials, which can then be used to reconfigure routers or exfiltrate sensitive data.
QuSmart.AI’s quantum secure channels are designed to eliminate these vulnerabilities by protecting not just the data, but also the communication paths between management systems and routers. These secure channels prevent any tampering with credentials or management instructions. If had employed QuSmart.AI’s quantum secure encryption, any attempt by hackers to use SQL injection to steal credentials or inject malicious code into the routers would have been immediately blocked.
With QuSmart.AI’s perfect secrecy encryption, which uses unique, non-repeating keys, hackers would have been unable to reuse stolen credentials or tamper with them in any way. This quantum-secure encryption would have ensured that even if attackers accessed the database, the stolen data would be rendered useless, effectively preventing them from launching an SQL injection attack in the first place.
Quantum Secure Encryption for Data in Transit: Preventing Data Exfiltration
It is thought hackers reconfigured Cisco routers, they did so with the intent to exfiltrate sensitive data as it flowed through the network. By manipulating the routers, they were able to intercept, reroute, and capture this data—potentially gaining access to private communications and other valuable information.
If QuSmart.AI’s quantum secure encryption for data in transit had been in place, the story would have been very different. QuSmart.AI encrypts all data as it moves across the network using quantum-secure, one-time pad encryption—the most secure form of encryption available. With high-entropy keys that are never reused, the data exfiltrated by the hackers would have been rendered completely unreadable and useless.
Even if attackers intercepted data, they wouldn’t have been able to decrypt it without the correct one-time-use encryption key. This would have effectively neutralized their ability to exfiltrate valuable information, ensuring that the intercepted traffic was encrypted end-to-end and secured with quantum-level randomness.
Perfect Secrecy for Data at Rest: Malware Prevention
Malware is a critical tool in the hacker’s arsenal, often used to manipulate or steal data from compromised systems. In this breach, it’s possible that malware was deployed to maintain persistent access to the routers and network infrastructure.
QuSmart.AI’s quantum secure encryption for data at rest could have made a significant difference. QuSmart.AI’s AI-driven encryption engine is designed to prevent malware from being able to manipulate or steal encrypted data. Even if malware had been deployed to the routers, any sensitive data stored on those systems would have been encrypted using perfect secrecy. This means that, without the necessary decryption keys, the malware wouldn’t have been able to read or alter the encrypted data.
By blocking malware and ensuring that data at rest remains encrypted with quantum-secure keys, QuSmart.AI would have protected them from long-term damage and data theft.
Quantum Secure Encryption: Mitigating the Risk of Data Theft During Router Breaches
Although QuSmart.AI is not an Identity and Access Management (IAM) system, it plays a crucial role in securing data even when brute force or other credential-based attacks are attempted. In the Telecom breach, hackers likely tried to gain unauthorized access to the routers by exploiting security weaknesses or even repeatedly guessing credentials through brute force attacks.
While an IAM system might manage and protect user credentials, QuSmart.AI’s AI engine focuses on protecting the data itself. Even if hackers succeeded in cracking credentials or gaining access to the network infrastructure, QuSmart.AI’s quantum-secure encryption would have ensured that any sensitive data flowing through the routers remained protected.
- Quantum Secure Encryption for Data in Transit: QuSmart.AI uses encryption keys that are rotated automatically and frequently, making it impossible for attackers to break through by guessing or attempting brute force attacks on encrypted data. Since the keys are never reused and are generated with high entropy, even persistent attackers wouldn’t be able to compromise the encryption.
In this way, QuSmart.AI acts as a last line of defense, ensuring that even if attackers bypass other layers of security, they cannot exfiltrate or manipulate the data they access.
Perfect Secrecy for Streaming Data: Securing Real-Time Traffic
In addition to exfiltrating stored data, the hackers who breached the networks may have intercepted real-time traffic as it streamed through the compromised routers. This could include sensitive communications or even business-critical data being transmitted across their infrastructures.
With QuSmart.AI’s quantum-secure streaming data encryption, all real-time traffic would be protected using perfect secrecy. Streaming data is encrypted in real-time with one-time pad encryption, meaning that any intercepted traffic would be completely unreadable without the correct decryption key.
Even if attackers had access to the network for an extended period, they would be unable to decrypt or manipulate the streaming data due to the high-entropy encryption keys that QuSmart.AI Infinity AI engine generates. It is important to understand, QuSmart.AI never initiates an exchange to create a key with an endpoint such as with PQC tools, RSA Keys, or Diffie-Hellman exchange. Due to this, recording network traffic will never give even a hint to the actual key used which is the length of the data stream. This ensures that no matter how long attackers remain in the system, they can’t make sense of the streaming data they capture.
Automated Key Management: Closing the Door on Persistent Threats
One of the biggest challenges in managing encrypted systems is ensuring that encryption keys are properly managed and rotated. In many breaches, attackers can persist in the network for long periods, gathering data over time because encryption keys are reused or improperly secured.
QuSmart.AI’s automated key management ensures that encryption keys are generated, managed, and rotated automatically. QuSmart.AI never initiates an exchange to create a key with an endpoint such as with PQC tools, RSA Keys, or Diffie-Hellman exchange. Combined with high-entropy quantum-generated keys that are never reused, QuSmart.AI closes the door on persistent threats by ensuring that even if attackers gain access to encrypted data, they will never be able to decrypt or reuse it.
QuSmart.AI solutions Could Have Stopped or Mitigated Risk from the Salt Typhoon Hack
Had QuSmart.AI’s Perfect Secrecy solutions been deployed, the hackers would have faced an impenetrable wall of quantum secure encryption for data at rest, in transit, and streaming. By preventing SQL injection, blocking malware, stopping brute force attacks, and ensuring that all data is encrypted with perfect secrecy, QuSmart.AI would have rendered the attackers’ efforts ineffective even when network equipment has been compromised.
Not only would QuSmart.AI have protected their network, but its quantum secure encryption would have ensured that even if data were exfiltrated, it would remain completely unreadable—protecting the company, its customers, and sensitive communications from falling into the wrong hands.
In a world of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, QuSmart.AI’s Perfect Secrecy solutions provide the level of protection needed to stay ahead of attackers today and tomorrow. Whether for data at rest, in transit, or streaming, QuSmart.AI ensures that your most sensitive information remains secure—no matter what.
QuSmart.AI is a women-founded Quantum Security company with patent pending technology for perfect secrecy solutions that are quantum proof AI solutions.