T-Mobile US: we were hacked but we handled it better than everyone else

And, while offering an update on the situation, it also took the opportunity to point out that it has fared better that its rivals throughout. Because why not spin a major international security incident into a PR opportunity?

T-Mobile says it wants to clear up some "misleading media reports" about a series of coordinated cyberattacks on US telecoms companies known as Salt Typhoon, apparently linked to China. Details have been emerging over the past few days.

The telco explained that while the cyberattackers are reported to have gained access to some providers' customer information, including sensitive data, over an extended period of time, this is not the case for its customers.

T-Mobile believes that much of what it has experienced "is different from what is being seen by other providers," it said, in a blog post attributed to its Chief Security Officer Jeff Simon.

"Within the last few weeks, we detected attempts to infiltrate our systems by bad actors. This originated from a wireline provider's network that was connected to ours," the blog post reads. "We see no instances of prior attempts like this."

Naturally, T-Mobile has not named the wireline provider in question.

"We quickly severed connectivity to the provider's network as we believe it was – and may still be – compromised," it said.

T-Mobile insists its own infrastructure is just fine, though, and it sees no evidence of any infiltration at present.

"Simply put, our defenses worked as designed – from our layered network design to robust monitoring and partnerships with third-party cyber security experts and a prompt response – to prevent the attackers from advancing and, importantly, stopped them from accessing sensitive customer information," the blog post reads. "Other providers may be seeing different outcomes."

We can't really comment on that last point, since T-Mobile is really the only one of the big US telecoms companies to talk about the cyberattacks. For that it is to be lauded, despite its attempts to undermine its competitors. We believe AT&T, Verizon and Lumen were also attacked.

It said it cannot definitively identify the attacker's identity, be it Salt Typhoon or another similar group, but it has reported its findings to the government for assessment.

While Salt Typhoon is a major headache for the telcos, it's an even bigger deal for the government.

Simon confirmed that he attended last week's White House meeting called to discuss the mitigation of these large-scale, sophisticated cyber threats. Whatever happened at that meeting is clearly still classified though.

"As we all have a mutual goal to protect American consumers, we felt it was important to communicate more about what we've seen with providers who may still be fighting these adversaries," Simon said.

It's point-scoring disguised as altruism. But it would be useful to hear more from the others about what's actually going on.