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The episode comes at a particularly sensitive moment, just as the Biden White House is dealing with one of the most far-reaching, and damaging, hacks into American infrastructure in the cyberage.
By Ana Swanson and David E. Sanger
Reporting from Washington
One of China’s intelligence agencies has hacked into the U. S. Treasury Department, accessing government employee workstations and unclassified documents, Biden’s leadership announced Monday, the latest in a series of embarrassing surveillance operations against major U. S. institutions.
From the first limited account of the Treasure episode, it unclear precisely what the pirates were hunting out for. But senior officials with access to intelligence on the breach said it entirely an espionage operation and not component of other Chinese efforts to insert malicious pc code into force grids and networks. water systems, giving them the skill to cut off critical U. S. networks. infrastructure.
In a letter informing lawmakers about the episode, the Treasury Department said it was informed on Dec. 8 through an outside software company, BeyondTrust, that the hacker had received a security key that allowed him remote access to certain Treasury files. jobs and documents located there.
“Based on available indicators, the incident was attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored persistent complex risk actor (APT),” the letter said. “According to Treasury policy, intrusions attributable to an APT are considered a primary cybersecurity incident. »
Senior Chinese officials have a deep interest in the activities of the Treasury Department, which oversees sensitive insights into global monetary systems and estimates of China’s troubled economy. The ministry also applies sanctions to Chinese companies, including, lately, those helping Russia in the war against Ukraine.
Earlier in the year, Chinese intelligence cracked email accounts used by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo as she was making determinations about new export controls on advanced semiconductors and other key technology, an attempt to slow their acquisition by Chinese firms. Similar efforts were made against targets in the State Department.
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