Chinese hackers apparently hacked the US Treasury Department and acquired access to sensitive data. On December 8, the software service provider “Beyond Trust” reportedly informed the Treasury Department that the hackers had obtained a security key that allowed them to remotely access certain workstations of the Treasury Department and the documents on them, according to a letter from the Treasury Department to the Biden administration, cited by the New York Times.
“Based on the available indicators, the incident was attributed to a state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor from China” the newspaper further quotes the letter. “In line with the Treasury Department’s policy, actors attributed to an APT are considered a serious cybersecurity incident.”
The compromised service has been taken off the network, and there is no indication that the Chinese state-sponsored actor still has access to the Treasury Department’s data, it was stated. The exact time of the incident was not initially disclosed by the authority.