Foreign state-sponsored thieves breached the US Treasury Department and accessed the servers of top leaders, including Secretary Janet Yellen, Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo, and Acting Under Secretary Brad Smith, according to two people familiar with the matter, quoted by Bloomberg.
The intruders accessed unidentified files, with around 50 documents on Yellen’s system being compromised.
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Elon Musk made fun of the standard as the news spread, claiming that anyone could steal into her system. ” A 12-year-old text kids could hack into Yellen’s system. He cited a blog about the hack and said,” I doubt she knows how to relaunch her WiFi router.”
The violation, which was apparently part of a broader assault on the Treasury, focused on the agency’s responsibility in sanctions, cleverness, and foreign affairs. The thieves did not penetrate Treasury’s contact or labeled devices, according to a Treasury statement.
Treasury team briefed legislative advisers and politicians about the steal on Wednesday and Thursday, coinciding with the Senate Finance Committee’s confirmation hearing for Scott Bessent, President-elect Donald Trump’s candidate for Treasury minister.
The Chinese workers breached more than 400 computer and desktop systems, accessing individual usernames, passwords, and over 3, 000 files on unidentified individual devices. Additionally, they accessed delicate information about US studies led by the Committee on Foreign Investment.
Silk Typhoon and UNC5221, a Taiwanese state-sponsored artist, were the source of the hack, according to researchers. The attackers prioritized file retrieval and went off-duty to avoid being discovered.
By breaching a third-party software vendor’s protection, the cyber attackers gained remote access to many US Treasury Department servers and non-classified documents, according to the company’s speech on December 30.
The Treasury did not specify the number of afflicted computers or the nature of downloaded files in its publication email to members of Congress about the security breach. But, it stated that “at this time, there is no proof that the risk artist has continued to have access to Treasury information.” The organization confirmed that a “major security incident” was being looked into for the cyber breach.