China’s recent breach of the innermost workings of the U.S. telecommunications system reached far deeper than the Biden administration has described, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said on Thursday, with hackers able to listen in on telephone conversations and read text messages.

美国参议院情报委员会主席周四表示，中国最近一次对美国电信系统内部的入侵程度远超拜登政府所描述的范畴，黑客实际能够窃听电话交谈并读取短信。

“The barn door is still wide open, or mostly open,” the Democratic chairman, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a former telecommunications executive, said in an interview on Thursday.

民主党主席、弗吉尼亚州参议员马克·沃纳周四在接受采访时说：“门户依然大开，或者说基本是大开。”

Mr. Warner said he had been stunned by the scope and depth of the breach, which was engineered over the past year by a group linked to Chinese intelligence that has been named Salt Typhoon by Microsoft, whose cybersecurity team discovered the hack in the summer. Government officials have been struggling to understand what China obtained and how it might have been able to monitor conversations held by a number of well-connected Americans, including President-elect Donald J. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance.

沃纳说，他对此次入侵的范围和深度感到震惊，入侵行动由一个与中国情报部门存在关联的组织在过去一年里策划实施，微软将其命名为“盐台风”。该公司网络安全团队在夏季发现了这次黑客入侵。政府官员一直在努力了解中国获得了什么信息，以及对于中国是如何做到监控一些人脉广泛的美国人的对话，这其中包括候任总统特朗普和候任副总统JD·万斯。

At first, the F.B.I. and other investigators believed that China’s hackers used stolen passwords to focus mostly on the system that taps telephone conversations and texts under court orders. It is administered by a number of the nation’s telecommunications firms, including the three largest — Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. But in recent days, investigators have discovered how deeply China’s hackers had moved throughout the country by exploiting aging equipment and seams in the networks connecting disparate systems.

起初，联邦调查局等调查方认为，中国黑客利用了窃取来的密码，主要针对一个根据法院命令监听电话交谈和短信的系统。该系统由多家美国电信公司管理，其中包括威瑞森、AT&T和T-Mobile三大电信公司。但最近几天，调查人员发现，中国黑客利用老化设备和不同系统相连时产生的漏洞，在全美进行了深度入侵。

U.S. officials said that since the hack was exposed, the Chinese intruders had seemingly disappeared, suspending their intrusion so their full activity could not be discovered. But Mr. Warner said it would be wrong to conclude that the Chinese had been ousted from the nation’s telecommunications system, or that investigators even understood how deeply they were embedded.

美国官员表示，自黑客入侵事件曝光以来，中国入侵者似乎销声匿迹，暂停了入侵活动，以免其全部活动被发现。但沃纳表示，如果因此认为中方人员已被逐出美国电信系统，甚至认为调查人员已经了解了中国入侵者的渗透程度，都将是错误的。

“We’ve not found everywhere they are,” Mr. Warner said.

“我们还没有把他们全部挖掘出来，”沃纳说。

The committee has received briefings from the government on the hack, and Mr. Warner has had conversations with telecommunications executives.

参议院情报委员会已经收到了政府关于黑客攻击的简报，沃纳也与电信高管进行了交谈。

China has been the source of hacking concerns for two decades. At first the biggest worry was the theft of intellectual property, such as chip designs and plans for military equipment. Those included the F-35, America’s most advanced fighter jet, whose blueprints China stole from American military contractors. Then, during the Bush and Obama administrations, China’s focus turned to understanding American government officials, including the theft of the security clearance files of more than 22 million Americans.

20年来，中国一直是黑客攻击担忧的源头。起初，最大的担忧是知识产权被盗问题，例如芯片设计和军事装备计划。这些计划包括美国最先进的战斗机F-35，中国从美国军事承包商那里窃取了该机蓝图。后来，在布什和奥巴马执政期间，中国的重点转向了了解美国政府官员，相关行动包括窃取超过2200万美国人的安全审查文件。

Russia carved a different path. Late in Mr. Trump’s first term, it placed code into products turned out by a company called SolarWinds, which provided software to the federal government and America’s largest companies. Hackers backed by Moscow also got into the network of a major gas and fuel distributor, Colonial Pipeline, disrupting the supply of gasoline in the first year of the Biden administration.

俄罗斯则另辟蹊径。在特朗普首个任期后期，俄罗斯在一家名为SolarWinds的公司生产的产品中植入了代码，该公司为联邦政府和美国最大的公司提供软件。由莫斯科支持的黑客还入侵了一家大型天然气和燃料分销商Colonial Pipeline的网络，在拜登政府执政的第一年对汽油供应进行干扰。

But the Chinese activity in the past year has taken these intrusions to a new level, Mr. Warner said on Thursday. “This is far and away the most serious telecom hack in our history,” he said. “This makes Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds look like small potatoes.”

但是沃纳周四表示，过去一年中国的活动将这些入侵行为提升到了新的水平。他说：“这是我国历史上最严重的电信黑客攻击，让Colonial Pipeline公司和SolarWinds公司的事情看起来不值一提。”

He said that only in the past week had it become clear that “every major provider has been broken into.”

他说，直到上周才清楚“每个主要电信供应商都被入侵了”。

The hackers were not able to listen to conversations on encrypted applications, like those carried over WhatsApp or Signal. Nor could they read encrypted messages, such as those sent from one iPhone to another over Apple’s iMessage system. But they could read regular text messages between an iPhone and an Android phone, for example, or listen to phone calls over the ordinary telephone networks, much as the government can if it has a legal order.

这些黑客无法窃听加密应用程序上的对话（例如通过WhatsApp或Signal进行的对话）。他们也无法读取加密信息，例如通过苹果公司的iMessage系统从一部iPhone发送到另一部iPhone的信息，但他们可以读取iPhone和Android手机之间的常规短信，或可以通过普通电话网络窃听通话，就像政府在获得合法命令后可以窃听电话一样。

The Chinese went after the conversations of national security officials, politicians and some of their staff, investigators have concluded. There may have been several Chinese groups at work, said a senior official involved in the investigation, who noted that one of them might have focused on Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance.

调查人员得出结论，中方的目标是美国国家安全官员、政客及其部分工作人员的谈话。参与调查的一位高级官员表示，可能有多个中国组织同时在行动。该官员表示，可能有一个组织专门针对特朗普和万斯。

“It wasn’t like the equivalent of a tap on your phone for a constant, 24/7 time,” Mr. Warner said. Instead, he said, they could listen to specific targets for specific periods of time.

“这和持续、全天候窃听你的手机不一样，”沃纳说，中方可以在特定时间段内对特定目标进行监听。

Investigators believe that, so far, the Chinese hackers lack the ability to go back into the records they gained access to and listen to past calls. But they could gather metadata about previous calls — the phone numbers called, the length of the calls and perhaps the rough location of the cellphones involved. Even if they did not listen to many calls, the metadata and geolocation data the Chinese have gathered of important American officials are alarming.

调查人员认为，到目前为止，中国黑客尚无法获取在其侵入前产生的记录，无法窃听过去的通话。但他们可以收集到有关过往通话的元数据——被呼叫的电话号码、通话时长以及所涉手机的粗略位置。即使他们收听的通话数量不多，但中方收集到有关美国重要官员的元数据和地理位置数据也令人警惕。

Mr. Warner said it was important to let investigators continue their work to discover the extent of the penetration and learn more. But he said it was crucial that the public understand that the intrusion was not confined to Washington but was far broader and exposed critical vulnerabilities.

沃纳说，让调查人员继续工作，以发现渗透的程度并了解更多情况，这一点很重要。但他表示，公众必须明白，入侵不仅限于华盛顿，而是范围更广，并且暴露了关键的薄弱之处。

“We have to let the American people know this,” Mr. Warner said. “Folks need to know.”

沃纳说：“我们必须让美国人民知道这一点。人们需要知道这一点。”

Similar hacks in Australia and Britain led officials there to put minimum standards in place, and Mr. Warner said he hoped the exposure of the Chinese hack would prompt stronger standards in the United States.

澳大利亚和英国也发生了类似的黑客入侵事件，促使当地官员制定了最低限度的标准。沃纳表示，他希望中国黑客入侵事件的曝光能够促使美国制定更严格的标准。