The U.S. Treasury Department has reported a serious cybersecurity incident in which state-sponsored Chinese hackers gained access to internal documents of the department.
This is reported by Reuters.
According to a letter sent to U.S. lawmakers, the attackers were able to penetrate the U.S. Treasury Department's systems through the company BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. The hackers took possession of the access key to the cloud-based technical support service, which allowed them to bypass security systems and gain remote access to the workstations of employees of the ministry.
The Treasury Department was informed of the leak on December 8 and is currently working with the FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to assess the scope of the breach. According to available information, the stolen documents did not contain classified data.
A representative of the Chinese Embassy in Washington categorically rejected the accusations, calling them ungrounded attacks on China.
BeyondTrust confirmed the security breach in early December and said it had already notified a limited number of customers and law enforcement agencies about the incident. An investigation is ongoing.
According to Tom Hagel, a cybersecurity expert at SentinelOne, this incident fits a well-documented pattern of operations linked to the PRC, which increasingly use access through trusted third-party service providers.
As previously reported, as a result of a russian cyberattack on December 20, 2024, certain state registries in Ukraine stopped working.
Who we are: About us, Contacts. How we write news and our principles: Editorial code. We did our best. If you found this valuable – please support us.
To request a correction, please send an email.