Investigators believe Chinese hackers gained access to the information stored on the phones of former President Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance.
These hackers reportedly gained access to various American telecommunications systems, including — in this specific case — Verizon phone systems, which helped them acquire the data of specific, individual cell phone devices.
The Trump campaign was alerted of the cyber attacks earlier this week.
News of the attacks broke Friday, thanks to an anonymously-sourced report from The New York Times.
Sources told the Times that investigators have yet to determine what data exactly was stolen or accessed.
But, given the sensitive nature of the communications that likely took place on the personal devices of the two Republican nominees, the data potentially acquired by China could be extremely valuable for foreign intelligence purposes.
According to the report, the hackers may now know “who [Trump and Vance] called and texted, how often they communicated with certain people, and how long they talked to those people …”
Trump and Vance were far from the only victims of the cyber attack, however.
Sources told the Times that they were among many different figures both “inside and outside [the] government” whose phones