According to a new report by The New York Times, the US Treasury Department has been hacked. The report says that the attack was linked to a “China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat actor”.
The US Treasury Department has been hacked by Chinese hackers, it seems
The report also notes that this incident is regarded as “a major cybersecurity incident”. It is noted that documents and workstations at the US Treasury Department were accessed during this cyberattack.
TechCrunch has shared a letter that the Treasury Department sent to lawmakers. This issue happened earlier this month, actually, as the US officials were made aware of it on December 8. That was the day when BeyondTrust, a third-party software company, notified the US Treasury Department that a security key used to provide technical support was used to access workstations and unclassified documents.
As soon as the US Treasury Department learned of the incident, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) became a part of the story, and the same goes for the FBI.
The report does not say how long were files and workstations accessible during the attack. It also does not mention what exactly was accessed.
This does remind us of a recent ‘Salt Typhoon’ incident
If this attack sounds familiar, then the words ‘Salt Typhoon’ may be familiar too. It does remind us of a recent cyberattack including US telecom carriers, details of which cam to light back in October.
That cyberattack was also conducted by a Chinese hacking group referred to as ‘Salt Typhoon’. They managed to get access to unencrypted SMS messages and call logs of politicians, government officials, and others. That was going on for months, it seems, before the breach was discovered.
The US Treasury Department was contacted in hopes that we’ll learn more information about the attack. At this point in time we can only wait to hear if anything else will be shared.
2024-12-31 15:06:56