US Treasury says Chinese state-backed actor hacked its computers

Unlock the free White House Watch newsletter

Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

A Chinese state-sponsored actor hacked the U.S. Treasury Department through a third-party service provider in a “major cybersecurity incident,” the agency said Monday.

In a letter to the Senate Banking Committee seen by the Financial Times, the Treasury Department said it was informed on December 8 by software company Beyond Trust that a hacker had breached several remote government workstations by obtaining a security key and thereby gained access. Unclassified documents on them.

“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to China’s state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor,” the letter said. “According to Treasury policy, an intrusion attributed to an APT is considered a major cyber security incident.”

The department said it is working with the FBI and other investigators in the broader intelligence community to determine the impact of the hack. It added that “there is no evidence at this time to indicate that the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information”.

In a separate statement on Monday, a Treasury spokesman said the agency “takes all threats against our systems and the data they contain very seriously”.

“We will continue to work with partners in both the private and public sectors to protect our financial system from threat actors,” the person added.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said on Monday: “We hope that relevant parties will adopt a professional and responsible attitude when identifying cyber incidents, basing their conclusions on substantial evidence rather than baseless speculation and allegations.”

“The United States must stop using cybersecurity to slander and slander China and stop spreading all kinds of misinformation about the so-called Chinese hacking threat,” he added.

The breach is the latest cyber security breach allegedly involving US targets by China.

In October, the Biden administration said this investigation What the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said was “unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors associated with the People’s Republic of China”. Hackers reportedly targeted the phones of President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance ahead of the US election.

The Department of Commerce in September reduced the level of concern steps taken Proposed bans on Chinese software and hardware for vehicles with built-in Internet connectivity to limit China’s access to Americans’ data.