The U.S. Treasury Department confirmed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached a third-party software server, accessing Treasury employee workstations with sensitive information in what officials describe as a “major incident.”
BeyondTrust software alerts U.S. Treasury to security breach
On Monday, Aditi Hardikar, assistant secretary for management at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, said the third-party software provider BeyondTrust notified the department of the breach on Dec. 8. The threat actor accessed information using a stolen key containing unclassified documents, CNN reported.
“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor,” Hardikar wrote in the letter obtained by CNN.
‘China consistently opposes all forms of hacking’
The U.S. Treasury is collaborating with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and law enforcement to address the breach, ensuring the threat actor can no longer access the affected workstations and that they have been taken offline.
A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry denied the accusations in a daily briefing on Monday.
“China consistently opposes all forms of hacking and is firmly against the spread of false information targeting China for political purposes,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning said in a statement obtained by NBC News.
China says U.S. has no evidence of hacking
Embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu told BBC that the U.S. has not provided evidence that China has hacked their systems.
“The US needs to stop using cyber security to smear and slander China, and stop spreading all kinds of disinformation about the so-called Chinese hacking threats,” he said.
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