(Headline USA) Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, already in the hotseat for her failed economic stewardship in allowing inflation to run rampant, faced mounting criticism following reports that China had hacked into America’s sensitive data ahead of the incoming Trump administration.
Chinese hackers remotely accessed several U.S. Treasury Department workstations and unclassified documents after compromising a third-party software service provider, the agency said Monday.
The Treasury Department said it learned of the latest problem on Dec. 8, when a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, flagged that hackers had stolen a key that helped the hackers override the service’s security and gain remote access to several employee workstations.
“A threat actor had gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices end users,” assistant Treasury secretary Aditi Hardikar said in a letter to leaders of the Senate Banking Committee. “With access to the stolen key, the threat actor was able override the service’s security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users.”
The compromised service has since been taken offline, Hardikar said.
“[A]t this time there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information,” she claimed.
The department did not provide details on how many workstations had been accessed or what sort of documents the hackers may have obtained, but a department spokesperson said in a separate statement that it was being investigated as a “major” cybersecurity incident.
“Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems, and the data it holds,” the statement claimed. “Over the last four years, Treasury has significantly bolstered its cyber defense, and we will continue to work with both private and public sector partners to protect our financial system from threat actors.”
Despite the claim, there have been indications that Yellen herself—along with other Biden emissaries, such as former “climate czar” John Kerry and his successor as secretary of State, Tony Blinken—have been less than vigilant during meetings with the trans-Pacific rival.
China succeeded in hacking top State Department officials in July 2023, ahead of a visit by Kerry.
Meanwhile, Yellen appears to have been drugged by the Chinese with psychedelic mushrooms during a visit last spring.
In Beijing, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson gave China’s standard response to hacking allegations after the recent attack.
“We have repeatedly stated our position on such groundless accusations that lack evidence,” Mao Ning said at a daily briefing. “China consistently opposes all forms of hacking, and we are even more opposed to the dissemination of false information against China for political purposes.”
The incident comes as U.S. officials are continuing to grapple with the fallout of a massive Chinese cyberespionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. A senior White House official said Friday that the number of telecommunications companies confirmed to have been affected by the hack has now risen to nine.
The Treasury Department said it was working with the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as others, to investigate the impact of the hack. It said the hack had been attributed to Chinese state-sponsored culprits but did not elaborate.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
