Thought Leadership
The USA repeatedly accuses China of hacker attacks. This time, the US Treasury Department reports an attack on its IT systems.
The US Treasury Department has reportedly been the target of a Chinese cyberattack. In a letter to members of Congress, the ministry announced, according to media reports, that it had been informed by a software company on December 8 that a hacker had obtained a security key. This had given him remote access to certain workstations of the Ministry of Finance and the documents on them, which were not classified as secret.
It is assumed that a Chinese state-sponsored actor was behind the “serious security incident”, it added. The Treasury Department said it had worked with the FBI, intelligence agencies and other investigators to determine the impact of the attack.
Access to “multiple” user workstations
There is no indication that the Chinese actor still has access to the Ministry of Finance’s data, it added. According to the Ministry, “several” user workstations of the Ministry of Finance were accessed. The Ministry of Finance is obliged to provide further information in an additional report within 30 days.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected the accusations and stated that there was no proof of this. China has always rejected all forms of hacker attacks and rejects the dissemination of false information against China for political purposes even more, said spokeswoman Mao Ning in Beijing.
Hacker attacks in the past
The US has been accusing China of state-controlled hacker attacks for years, which China has always denied. According to the US, Chinese hackers penetrated the systems of at least eight US telecommunications providers in early December in order to spy on high-ranking politicians.
Back in October, it became known that suspected Chinese hackers had also targeted the phone data of US President-elect Donald Trump – then still a presidential candidate – and his running mate J.D. Vance. The environment of the campaign team of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and other high-ranking members of Joe Biden’s administration are also said to have been targeted by the criminals at the time.
dpa
