China is accused by the United States of hacking the Treasury Department Cybersecurity News

Unclassified documents were stolen after a hack earlier this month, according to a letter the Treasury Department sent to Congress.

Chinese state-sponsored hackers were able to steal unclassified documents from US Treasury workstations earlier this month, the US Treasury said.

The ministry said on Monday that hackers were able to compromise a third-party cybersecurity service provider and access documents in what it described as a “major incident.”

“(Hackers) gained access to the key used by the vendor to secure the cloud service used to provide remote technical support to end users of Department of the Treasury (DO) offices,” a letter sent by the US Treasury Department to Congress said. “By accessing the stolen key, the threat actor was able to bypass the service’s security, remotely access some Treasury users’ workstations, and gain access to some non-confidential documents held by those users.”

A statement from the Treasury Department said the department “takes seriously all threats against our systems and the data they hold.”

The Treasury Department was alerted to the hack by cybersecurity provider, BeyondTrust on December 8. The department says it is working with the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI to assess the impact of the hack.

A Treasury spokesperson told AFP: “The compromised BeyondTrust service has been shut down and there is no evidence to suggest that the threat actor continued to access Treasury systems or information.”

The letter to the leadership of the US Senate Banking Committee directly accused China, saying the incident was “attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) actor.”

APT is a cyberattack where a hacker can maintain undetected and unauthorized access to a target for a period of time.

The Treasury said more information will be published in a supplementary report at a later date.

The hack report comes less than a month before the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump threatened China with a trade war and tariffs. Saying that Beijing has not done enough To stop the flow of the opioid fentanyl into the United States.

Both Republicans and Democrats under Trump have warned of Chinese threats against the United States, especially in the area of ​​cybersecurity.

In September, the US Department of Justice said it had stopped a cyber-attack network run by Chinese-backed hackers that affected 200,000 devices around the world.

And earlier in December in the United States Sanctions imposed on a Chinese cybersecurity company and a researcher into the 2020 attack that attempted to exploit a computer software vulnerability in the company’s firewalls.

China denied any involvement in the attacks and said it opposes all forms of cyber attacks.