Chinese Hackers Penetrated The US Treasury

Uploaded on 2025-01-01 in NEWS-Cybersecurity News, INTELLIGENCE-Hot Spots-China, GOVERNMENT-National, FREE TO VIEW

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, will visit China this month in an attempt to improve ‘economic and financial cooperation’. It seems likely that the members of the Chinese government she will be very well informed, not least because of intelligence gathered by China’s prolific nation-state hackers.

Their latest high profile exploit was revealed last week when the US Treasury disclosed that it had fallen victim of what it called a ‘major cyber security incident’.

The Treasury has blamed Chinese hackers, who successfully accessed individual employee work-station, enabling them to view documents. They also say that the documents accessed were unclassified, the infected user computers disconnected and no evidence found that the hacker remain the Treasury networks.

The hackers were detected by leading access management cyber security firm, BeyondTrust, who have reported that the hackers gained access by stealing a security key, although they have not revealed how many Treasury employee computers were were breached.

China official sources have denied any involvement, describing the Treasury Dept chargers "baseless" and saying it "consistently opposes all forms of hacking". Coincidentally, the alleged Treasury hacking follows allegations made by the Chinese security agency CNCERT/ CC that US intelligence agencies had attacked two Chinese technology firms to steal commercial sensitive information.

This latest high-profile exploit follows the hacking of major US telecommunications firms, enabling Chinese hackers to gain access to private texts and phone conversations of prominent political and business leaders, reportedly including President-elect Trump and his incoming vice-president J.D. Vance. The attack was blamed on a Chinese group known as Salt Typhoon.

The US and Britain have previously accused China of a long-term hacking campaign targeting politicians, journalists and businesses, blaming China’s ministry of state security, its main spy agencies and hacking affiliates. Indeed, China is thought to have invested heavily in a network of private sector contractors as it has vastly expanded its cyber capabilities.

Amongst recent British targets are the Electoral Commission, which had access to information on tens of millions of UK voters, and a company providing pay-roll services to the Ministry of Defence, which may have exposed personal information about British military personnel.

The UK’s intelligence agencies have said that China is now their top priority,and Ken McCallum, Head of the MI5 domestic spy agency has describing Chinese espionage as ‘a sustained campaign on a pretty epic scale’.

Other damaging exploits undertaken by another Chinese hacking group known as Volt Typhoon. According to Jen Easterly, Director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA). This group is focused on penetrating critical infrastructure for the purpose of sabotage. Their targets include naval ports, internet service providers, communications services and utilities like water, aviation and energy. Volt Typhoon has apparently maintained long-term access to systems for years, pre-positioning destructive malware which could be activated for future acts of sabotage in times of conflict.

CISA said that while the main target was US infrastructure, the infiltration was likely to have affected America’s Five Eyes, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Britain.

The timing of the Treasury Department hacking revelations could have significant geo-political consequences as as they come come to light just before Donald Trump’s second Presidential inauguration, and the start of a US administration which is expected to take a tougher line on relations with China. This is in contrast to Rachek Reeves’ imminent visit to China, during which she will discuss the re-opening of a Joint Economic and Trade Commission, set up in 1996 to promote trade and investment between the two countries, but suspended in 2020 after China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong.

Reeves will have had a briefing with the aim to improve ties with an increasingly hostile China, however, government officials and business leaders visiting the country are advised to take disposable 'burner phones' and throwaway laptops, as no electronic device can be considered safe once it has been exposed to ubiquitous Chinese domestic surveillance.

Image: Ideogram

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