Chinese hackers have access to US Treasury Department secrets – Reuters
The US Treasury Department said Chinese hackers allegedly broke into the department's computer security system and stole documents.
This was stated in a letter to legislators, to which representatives of the Ministry of Finance gave access to journalists from the Reuters agency.
The Treasury Department received a notice of a "major incident," as it is called, on December 8. Hackers allegedly managed to break into cybersecurity provider BeyondTrust and gain access to unclassified documents.
The letter says that the hackers managed to gain access to a special key for protecting the cloud service. Thanks to this, the attackers were able to bypass the security system, gain remote access and steal “certain non-secret documents.”
The U.S. Treasury Department is working with the Cybersecurity Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to assess the impact of the hack.
A BeyondTrust spokesperson said security measures were put in place as soon as the breach was discovered. The company notified “a limited number of customers who were involved” and law enforcement about the incident.
“The incident fits into a well-documented pattern of operations by China-linked groups, with a particular focus on abusing trusted third-party services, a technique that has become increasingly common in recent years,” said Tom Hegel, a threat researcher at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne (SN).
The publication notes that a representative of the Chinese Embassy in the United States denied involvement in the hacking and said that it “firmly opposes the US’s slanderous attacks on China without any factual basis .”
Chinese hackers have accessed US Treasury Department secrets – Reuters