The U.S. Treasury Department has released details of a “major incident” involving Chinese state-sponsored hackers who breached the Department’s network.
Today, in response to the incident, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning called the accusation “groundless”.
“China has always opposed all forms of hacker attacks,” Ning said, “We have stated our position many times regarding such groundless accusations that lack evidence,”
The hackers reportedly compromised third-party cybersecurity service provider BeyondTrust and were able to access unclassified documents.
According to the letter released by the Treasury Department, “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) … the threat actor was able override the service’s security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users.”
“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to a China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor.” the letter said, “The compromised BeyondTrust service has been taken offline and at this time there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information.”
By CEO NA Editorial Staff
