In a startling revelation, the Biden administration announced on Monday that the Treasury Department of the United States of America had been the target of a state-sponsored attack by a Chinese hacker. The hacker gained access to employees’ workstations and unclassified documents within the department. This comes after several revelations in recent months that China had penetrated deep into the US telecommunications system, gaining access to the call records and messages of many top officials within Congress.
In a letter to lawmakers, the Treasury Department informed them that the hackers had attacked a third-party cybersecurity service provider, BeyondTrust, and were able to access unclassified documents. According to the letter, “Hackers 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. With access to the stolen key, the threat actor was able to override the service’s security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users.”
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For now, the treasury department is working closely with the FBI and other lawmakers to ensure that the culprits of this attack are brought to justice. Moreover, the treasury department is also looking into how the key was revealed to the hackers and if the third-party cybersecurity providers are at fault.
After these claims, a spokesperson for China’s Embassy said that Beijing “firmly opposes the U.S.’s smear attacks against China without any factual basis.” On the other hand, in a letter to the news agency Reuters, BeyondTrust has said that the company “previously identified and took measures to address a security incident in early December 2024. BeyondTrust notified the limited number of customers who were involved. BeyondTrust has been supporting the investigative efforts.“
