Big Incident! US Treasury Department Hacked By Chinese Hackers

Illustration of the US Treasury Department office. (Doc. US Treasury)

JAKARTA - The United States (US) Department of Finance (US) or US Treasury experienced a cyber incident. The attack was linked as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), sponsored by the Chinese state.

In a letter shared by the Treasury Department, they received news of this incident on December 8, 2024 caused by third-party software service infiltration, BeyondTrust, in which hackers managed to access a number of documents that were not confidential.

Incident settings were detected, the Treasury Department immediately collaborated with Cybersecurity and Infrastructure (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the intelligence community, and third-party forensic investigators to investigate and assess the impact of this incident.

Currently, the Treasury Department says that the compromised BeyondTrust service has been deactivated, and there are no more traces of hackers still having access to their documents.

They also emphasize that intrusions like this, especially those involving APT, are categorized as major cybersecurity incidents according to their policies. In accordance with the Department of Finance's policy, the intrusion caused by APT is considered a major cybersecurity incident," Aditi Hardikar, Assistant Secretary of Management of the US Treasury in the statement.

The Treasury Department will release additional reports in the next 30 days, as mandated by the 2014 Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) and the Policy and Budget Office Memorandum (OMB) 24-04.

Aditi emphasized the US Treasury's commitment to maintaining information security and minimizing the risk of future attacks.