US Treasury: Chinese hackers stole sensitive documents

The US Treasury Department said on Monday that Chinese-backed hackers had broken into their systems in December, accessing unclassified documents.

The department said it is working with the FBI after the "major incident," which China has denied a role in. US accusations are "baseless," Beijing said, stressing it "has always opposed all forms of hacker attacks."

In a letter notifying lawmakers of the breach, the Treasury said hackers "gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) end users. With access to the stolen key, the threat actor was able to override the service’s security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users."

This report comes following revelations in recent months that China has infiltrated the communication systems in the US, gaining access to phone calls and text messages of American officials. At the beginning of the month, BeyondTrust, a company that provides software services, informed the Treasury Department that the hackers had managed to gain access that allowed them to remotely access a number of the department's workstations and the documents on them.