US Treasury says Chinese hackers stole documents in 'major incident'
Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached the US Treasury Department's computer security guardrails this month and stole documents in what Treasury called a 'major incident,' according to a letter to lawmakers that Treasury officials provided to Reuters on Monday.
The breach involved BeyondTrust, a third-party cybersecurity provider. The hackers exploited a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service that provides remote technical support to the Treasury’s Departmental Offices (DO), as outlined in the letter. With this key, the attackers bypassed security measures, remotely accessed workstations of certain DO users, and obtained unclassified documents stored by those individuals.
The Treasury Department learned of the breach from BeyondTrust on December 8 and has since collaborated with the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to evaluate the incident's scope and implications.
Requests for additional information from the Treasury Department and the FBI went unanswered, while CISA redirected inquiries back to the Treasury. Meanwhile, a spokesperson from the Chinese Embassy in Washington denied any involvement, criticizing the US for making unfounded accusations against China.
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