US Treasury says Chinese state-backed actor hacked its computers

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A Chinese state-backed 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 by software firm BeyondTrust on December 8 that a hacker had breached several remote government offices, obtaining a security key and in turn access to declassified documents related to them;

“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) actor,” the letter said.

The department said it was working with the FBI and other investigators in the broader intelligence community to determine the impact of the hack.

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

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

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

“The US must stop using cyber security to slander and defame China, and stop spreading all kinds of misinformation about so-called Chinese hacking threats,” he added.

The breach is the latest cyber security breach involving US targets allegedly carried out on behalf of China.

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

Underscoring the level of concern, the Commerce Department in September has taken steps limit China’s access to Americans’ data by proposing a ban on Chinese software and hardware for cars with built-in Internet connectivity.