Major Cybersecurity Incident: China State-sponsored Actor Breached US Treasury Workstations

 

                                                                                             Treasury contacted the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency after it was alerted of the situation by its provider BeyondTrust,

Major Cybersecurity Incident: China State-sponsored Actor Breached US Treasury Workstations 

The intrusion took place in early December when cybercriminals infiltrated a third-party cybersecurity service provider, which managed access to unclassified documents, as stated by US officials. 

A China "state-sponsored" entity breached the workstations of the US Treasury Department and gained remote entry to several workstations alongside a variety of unclassified documents earlier this month, as reported by numerous US media organizations. 

The hackers compromised the third-party cybersecurity provider BeyondTrust, thereby managing access to the unclassified materials. US officials further noted that this breach took place in early December and became public through a letter written by the Treasury Department to legislators alerting them about the incident. 

The US agency characterized the breach as a "major incident" and mentioned its collaboration with the FBI and other investigative bodies to examine the situation. 

"The compromised BeyondTrust service has been disabled, and there is no indication that the threat actor maintains access to Treasury systems or information," a spokesperson from the department stated. 

"According to the available indicators, the incident has been linked to a China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor," the Treasury mentioned in its correspondence to the Senate Banking Committee leadership.