US Treasury Department
Chinese computer hackers allegedly hacked the Treasury Department to access documents and may have been able to create accounts or change passwords.
At the beginning of the month, Chinese hackers broke into the systems of the United States Treasury Department, according to American authorities.
As reported by , the US Treasury Department classified what happened as a “serious incident”, after reporting the occurrence through a letter notifying legislators of the incident.
“Under Treasury policy, intrusions attributable to an APT are considered a serious cybersecurity incident“, Treasury Department officials said.
A China denied any involvement, classifying the accusation as “unfounded” and stating that “China systematically opposes all forms of computer piracy and firmly rejects the disclosure of false information targeting China for political purposes.”
It is not yet known exactly how much the alleged hackers have damaged the system, but a compromised third-party service, called BeyondTrust (which claims to have been aware of the incident on December 8), says that the Chinese will have had access to unspecified jobs and documents.
As agents of espionagehackers would have sought to obtain information, not exactly steal funds. There is, for now, no evidence that the hackers are, in fact, Chinese.
However, the service also says that hackers may have been able to create accounts or change passwords during the three days they were monitored by BeyondTrust.
Last year, two distinct groups of suspected Chinese government hackers were identified.
The Volt Typhoon was accused of entering critical infrastructure organizations for potential disruption attacks. The Salt Typhoon is accused of carrying out spy missionsincluding the telecommunications hacking earlier this month.
“The U.S. have to stop using cybersecurity to defame and slander China and stop spreading all types of disinformation about the so-called Chinese threats of computer piracy”, said the spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the USA, Liu Pengyu.
