China-Corrupted Hacker Breaks US Treasury Service

UNSPLASH/Desola ILLUSTRATION Lanre-Ologun

JAKARTA - Hackers arrested by China broke into the United States Department of Finance service this month. Hackers steal documents.

Reported by Reuters on Tuesday, December 31, hackers infiltrate third-party cybersecurity service provider BeyondTrust and can access documents that are claimed to be non-secret.

In a letter to US parliament, hackers gain access to the keys used by vendors to secure cloud-based services used to provide remote technical support for final users of the Department of Finance (DO) office.

With access to the stolen key, the perpetrator is able to rule out service security, access certain Treasury DO user work stations remotely, and access certain unsecret documents managed by the user.

The Treasury Department said it had been notified of this breach by BeyondTrust on December 8. It is working with the US and FBI's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency to assess the impact of the hack.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington has refused to be responsible for the hack.

The Chinese embassy said Beijing firmly opposed the US gross attack on China on a factual basis.

BeyondTrust's spokesman, based in Johns Creek, Georgia, told Reuters by email the company had previously identified and taken action to address a security incident in early December 2024 involving its remote support products.

BeyondTrust "is informing a number of customers involved," and law enforcement was also notified.