The United States Treasury Department has been Hacked into by China -

Major Cybersecurity Breach at U.S. Treasury Department.

NBC (link here for more info from NBC) has confirmed that the U.S. Treasury Department had significant cybersecurity breach, attributed to a state-sponsored Chinese hacking operation.

This incident, deemed a “major incident,” involved unauthorized access to the desktop computers of Treasury employees through third-party software.

Aditi Hardikar, assistant secretary for management of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, addressed the alarming situation in a letter to Senators Sherrod Brown and Tim Scott, members of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. According to the letter, the breach was reported to the Treasury on December 8, indicating the urgency and seriousness of the incident.

The breach was facilitated via a compromised third-party cybersecurity service provider, BeyondTrust. The threat exploited a vulnerability that allowed them access to a key used to secure a cloud-based service, ultimately enabling them to infiltrate the department’s workstations. The information accessed included unclassified documents, which raises concerns about the sensitivity of data that may have been compromised.

The U.S. Treasury has since been collaborating with various agencies, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI, as well as third-party forensic investigators, to fully assess the impact of the breach. They have concluded through their investigations that the origins of the attack trace back to Chinese hackers.

As a follow-up to this event, the Treasury Department plans to release a supplemental report within 30 days, which will provide further details on the incident and any measures being taken to prevent future occurrences.

These events are followed by previous Chinese hacking software, which have hacked into millions of Americans through their cellphones and cellphone carriers, At&t, as well as Verizon. U.S. government officials are suggesting that everyone in the United States use encrypted messaging and not send sensitive information over their cellphones.

Link for full article