United States authorities have alleged that a Chinese state-sponsored hacker have succeeded in breaching its U.S. Treasury Department. The Authorities confirmed the hackers have accessed government employees’ workstations and some unclassified documents. According to the New York Times reports President Joe Biden’s administration has confirmed the development yesterday.
The report revealed that, the incident was discovered on December 8 by BeyondTrust, a third-party software service provider.
However, the hacker had obtained a security key that enabled remote access to certain treasury workstations and the documents stored on them.
“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to a China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor,” a letter from the Treasury Department to lawmakers read.
“In accordance with Treasury policy, intrusions attributable to an APT are considered a major cyber security incident.”
The U.S. Treasury Department is currently working with the FBI, intelligence agencies, and other investigators to ascertain the impact the breach has cost the office.
However, the compromised service has since been deactivated, and there is no evidence suggesting that the Chinese actor still has access to treasury information.
