Chinese cyber hackers have targeted the US Treasury Department. In this cyber attack, hackers got access to some workstations of the Treasury. The department has informed the US Parliament in this regard.

A Treasury spokesperson said the incident occurred earlier this month. Chinese government-sponsored cyber hackers breached the security of a third-party cybersecurity provider and gained remote access to Treasury workstations and some unclassified documents.

The agency is investigating

When the third party service provider BeyondTrust informed about this, the Treasury contacted the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Currently, the department, along with law enforcement agencies, is studying the loss and investigating the matter.

The attack was sponsored by China

In a letter to the Senate Banking Committee, the Treasury said, ‘Based on available indications, this cyber attack is linked to an Advanced Persistent Threat sponsored by the Chinese government.’

Advanced Persistent Threat is the name given to those cyber attacks in which a hacker gains unauthorized access to a system but remains undetected for a long time.

Supplementary report will be released

However, the department did not give more information about the impact of the security breach. They have said that a supplementary report will be issued with more information in this regard.

Officials said the department will continue to work to protect the US financial system from threats. A Treasury spokesperson said in a statement that "the department takes any threat against its data and systems very seriously."

Constant allegations against China

• Many other countries, including the US, have repeatedly accused the Chinese government of cyber targeting their government, military and business departments with the help of hackers in the recent past.
• However, China rejected all these allegations and said that it is against any kind of cyber attack. In September, the US Justice Department claimed to have destroyed a cyber attack network that targeted 2 lakh devices. Its strings were also linked to China.

Before this, many American telecom companies including T-Mobile were also targeted by Chinese hackers.