US Accuses China of Cyberattack on Treasury Department: Major Incident

The US Treasury Department was the victim of a cyberattack in early December. This is stated in a letter from the department sent to elected members of the House of Representatives on Monday. Beijing is pointed at as the finger of blame.

According to the letter, the attack affected several workstations within the ministry, and software from a third party, BeyondTrust, was used. The hacking allegedly involved breaking into a system that Finance uses for technical support, but no classified information was compromised. There are “indications that the cyberattack was the work of a party financed by Beijing,” it says. The ministry is calling it a “major incident.”

The Treasury Department was notified of the attack on Dec. 8. The department is now working with the FBI, the Intelligence Community, and other investigators to assess the impact, The New York Times reported. The affected program was taken offline. The Chinese actor no longer has access to the information, it said, and sources said the hackers’ intention was to access classified information for espionage purposes.

The department has promised to prepare and present a report to Congress in the coming weeks with more details about the hack.

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The Chinese embassy in Washington said the attacks were “slanderous attacks on China without any factual basis.” “The US should stop using cybersecurity to smear and slander China and stop spreading all kinds of disinformation about the so-called Chinese cyber threat,” the embassy said.

A spokesperson for Georgia-based BeyondTrust told Reuters in an email that the company “previously identified a security incident and took steps to address it in early December 2024.” It said the company’s software was indeed involved. The spokesperson said that BeyondTrust “notified the limited number of customers who were impacted,” and law enforcement and government officials were notified. “BeyondTrust supported the investigation efforts.”

Earlier this month, it was also reported that hackers—also with support from China—had cracked three of the largest American telecommunications companies. During that break-in, called Salt Typhoon, cybercriminals gained access to the telephone conversations and text messages of politicians and government officials.