There would be no risk for classified elements. But the American Department of the Treasury nevertheless announced on Monday, in a letter addressed to elected representatives of the House of Representatives that AFP consulted, that it had been the victim of a cyberattack in early December.
According to this letter, the attack affected several workstations within the Treasury, using third-party software, BeyondTrust, and was carried out, “according to available indications, by an actor financially supported by China”.
The “corrupt software” removed
“As soon as the service provider alerted Treasury, we contacted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and worked with law enforcement to determine what the consequences of the intrusion were,” said in a press release a spokesperson for the ministry. “The corrupted software has been removed and there is no evidence to suggest that the intruder was able to continue to have access to the Treasury’s computer systems,” he added.
According to details provided by the Treasury in its letter to elected officials, the hackers managed to steal a coded key giving access to the software in question, which allowed them to bypass security systems and remotely access different computers. However, this is a “major computer security incident”, recognizes the ministry, which obliges it to inform elected officials.
Difficult to attribute a cyberattack
He plans to provide additional details within 30 days, as required by a 2014 Federal Government Systems Information Security Act. Attributing a cyberattack is very difficult to achieve technically, due to the many techniques used by hackers to cover their tracks, and politically sensitive.
However, this is not the first time that the United States, or some of its allies, have accused Beijing of being behind this type of action. Last March, Washington, London and Wellington accused China of being behind a series of attacks targeting their public institutions in recent years, an accusation rejected by Beijing, which deemed it “totally unfounded” and described as “slander”. “We have repeatedly expressed our position regarding such unfounded accusations that have no evidence,” Mao Ning, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said at a regular news conference in Beijing.