China’s state-sponsored actor hacks U.S. Treasury Department

Investing.com — The U.S. Treasury Department was recently hacked by a state-sponsored actor in China, leading to unauthorized access to government employees’ workstations and unclassified documents, according to an announcement made by the Biden administration on Monday.

This incident follows recent discoveries that China has infiltrated U.S. telecommunications systems, enabling them to access phone conversations and text messages of U.S. officials and others.

On Dec. 8, BeyondTrust, a third-party software service company, alerted the Treasury Department that the hacker had secured a security key. This key enabled remote access to select Treasury workstations and the documents housed within them. The department disclosed this information in a letter to lawmakers.

In response to the breach, the Treasury Department collaborated with the F.B.I., the intelligence community, and other investigators to assess the impact. The service that was compromised has since been taken offline. The department confirmed there is no evidence that the Chinese state actor still retains access to Treasury information.

A Treasury spokesperson issued a statement, emphasizing the department’s commitment to protecting its systems and the data they contain from hacking threats. The department will persist in partnering with the private sector and government agencies to safeguard the financial system.

The Treasury Department refrained from specifying the timeline of the incident but promised to provide more details in an upcoming supplemental report to Congress.

In related news, a separate breach of U.S. telecommunications systems by a Chinese hacking group, known as Salt Typhoon, has generated concerns about the vulnerability of U.S. systems. This summer, Microsoft’s cybersecurity team detected the hack, which allowed China to access conversations involving Donald J. Trump and JD Vance, among other Americans.

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