Chinese Hackers Breach Treasury Dept In ‘Major Cyber Security Incident’

The Treasury Department revealed on Monday that Chinese hackers had breached its systems in a “major cyber security incident.” 

In a letter to the Senate Banking Committee from Assistant Secretary for Management Aditi Hardikar, the department revealed that hackers accessed unclassified documents and employee workstations. The department believed a Chinese intelligence agency was behind the breach. 

“Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems, and the data it holds,” the department said in a statement. “Over the last four years, Treasury has significantly bolstered its cyber defense, and we will continue to work with both private and public sector partners to protect our financial system from threat actors.”

Hardikar said the department did not believe China still had access to its systems.

Hardikar added that the department was first notified of the breach on December 8 by third-party software service provider BeyondTrust that “a threat actor had gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) end users.”

This allowed the hackers to override security and gain access to Treasury Department employee workstations and the unclassified documents stored on them. 

The department has since been working with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI, and the Intelligence Community to probe the full extent of the breach. 

“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to a China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor,” Hardikar wrote. “In accordance with Treasury policy, intrusions attributable to an APT are considered a major cybersecurity incident.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning denied the allegations. 

“We have repeatedly stated our position on such groundless accusations that lack evidence,” said Ning, an official of the Chinese Communist Party. “China consistently opposes all forms of hacking, and we are even more opposed to the dissemination of false information against China for political purposes.”

China has previously been accused of being behind major hacking operations targeting Americans, including one operation that stole the emails of State Department employees and hacking major American telecommunications companies earlier this year.