Chinese hackers remotely accessed a number of U.S. Treasury Department workstations and unclassified paperwork after compromising a third-party software program service supplier, the company mentioned Monday.
The division didn’t present particulars on what number of workstations had been accessed or what kind of paperwork the hackers might have obtained, however it mentioned in a letter to lawmakers revealing the breach that “at the moment there isn’t a proof indicating the risk actor has continued entry to Treasury data.”
“Treasury takes very critically all threats in opposition to our techniques, and the info it holds,” the division mentioned. “Over the final 4 years, Treasury has considerably bolstered its cyber protection, and we’ll proceed to work with each personal and public sector companions to guard our monetary system from risk actors.”
The division mentioned it discovered of the issue on Dec. 8 when a third-party software program service supplier, BeyondTrust, flagged that hackers had stolen a key utilized by the seller that helped it override the system and achieve distant entry to a number of worker workstations.
The compromised service has since been taken offline, and there is no proof that the hackers nonetheless have entry to division data, Aditi Hardikar, an assistant Treasury secretary, mentioned within the letter Monday to leaders of the Senate Banking Committee.
The division mentioned it was working with the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and that the hack had been attributed to Chinese culprits. It didn’t elaborate.
