China hacked the US Treasury, gaining access to documents

The US Treasury Department was recently subjected to a hacker attack by China, which led to unauthorized access to government employees' workstations and unclassified documents.

This was reported by The New York Times, citing a statement from the Joe Biden administration.

As noted, the relevant incident occurred after recent reports of Chinese intrusion into US telecommunications systems. This allowed hackers to gain access to phone conversations and text messages of US officials and others.

On December 8, BeyondTrust, a third-party software vendor, notified the Treasury Department that a hacker had obtained the security key. This key allowed remote access to some workstations of the Ministry of Finance and the documents stored on them. The Ministry disclosed this information in a letter to legislators.

In response to the hacking attack, the Treasury Department worked with the FBI, the intelligence community and other investigators to assess the fallout, according to the NYT. The compromised service has since been disabled.

The Treasury Department refrained from specifying the time frame of the incident, but promised to provide more detailed information in a future supplemental report to Congress.

In this regard, a separate hacking of US telecommunications systems by a Chinese hacking group known as Salt Typhoon has raised concerns about the vulnerability of US systems. This summer, Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) cybersecurity team discovered a hack that allowed China to access, among other things, conversations involving Donald Trump and JD Vance.

As you know, in May hackers hacked the database of the British Ministry of Defense.