Hans Vestberg and Jeff Greene were both named in reporting about the U.S. response to the Salt Typhoon telecommunications hacking campaign in 2024. Vestberg led Verizon, while Greene held a senior cybersecurity role in the U.S. government.
Their involvement needs a clear distinction: Vestberg represented a company whose network had been accessed, while Greene spoke about the broader cybersecurity response. The reporting establishes their roles in the same incident, rather than a separate partnership between them.
Who are Hans Vestberg and Jeff Greene?
Hans Vestberg was Verizon’s chairman and chief executive during the 2024 telecom intrusions. His position placed him at the head of one of the companies responding to the attack.
The Jeff Greene relevant to this story is the cybersecurity professional who served as Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA. He took that role in June 2024, with responsibilities covering federal civilian agencies and critical infrastructure—the networks and systems that essential services depend on.
Greene’s earlier positions included cybersecurity policy work at the White House National Security Council and leadership of the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Those credentials identify the person involved in this story and help distinguish him from others with the same name.
What connects them to Salt Typhoon?
In its December 4, 2024 coverage, Reuters reported that Vestberg attended a November 22 White House meeting about the telecom intrusions. The same report quoted Greene explaining that officials could not yet predict when attackers would be fully removed from compromised networks.
These were different parts of the response: a meeting involving telecommunications executives and a public assessment from a cybersecurity official. The report does not establish that Greene attended the meeting or that the two men worked directly together.
What happened in the telecommunications attack?
Salt Typhoon is the name used in reporting for a cyberespionage campaign against telecommunications networks. Cyberespionage means gaining unauthorized access to systems to collect information secretly.
In a November 13, 2024 statement, the FBI and CISA attributed the campaign to actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China. The agencies described three types of compromised information: customer call records, private communications belonging to a limited group primarily involved in government or politics, and certain information covered by court-ordered law enforcement requests. Chinese officials disputed the hacking allegations.
Call records and communication content are different. Records can reveal which numbers communicated and when, without containing the words spoken during a call. That distinction matters when assessing what an intrusion exposed.
What did Verizon say afterward?
On January 10, 2025, Verizon announced that it had contained the incident. The company said it had worked with federal agencies, industry partners and private cybersecurity firms.
Verizon distinguished between a small group of targets primarily involved in government or politics and other wireless customers whose records were accessed. For the latter group, it said the attackers accessed a small percentage of mobile internet access and call records, but not the content of those communications.
That was Verizon’s account of its own network. It should not be read as a finding that every affected telecommunications network had been secured.
Are their 2024 job titles still accurate?
Vestberg stepped down as Verizon’s chairman and chief executive on October 4, 2025, when Daniel H. Schulman became CEO. Verizon appointed Vestberg as a special adviser for a transition period expected to run through October 4, 2026.
Greene has also moved beyond his CISA leadership position. Cambridge Global Advisors identifies him as a senior adviser and describes his CISA service as a former role.
References to Vestberg as Verizon’s CEO and Greene as a serving CISA executive therefore need a date. Those titles describe their positions during the 2024 Salt Typhoon response.
Read also Howard Schultz and George Soros: What Is Their Connection?
