US treasury says Chinese hackers accessed department workstations

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00:00The US Treasury Department has labelled it a major incident.

00:04In a letter to lawmakers on Monday, the agency said Chinese state-sponsored hackers had gained

00:10access to government workstations and unclassified documents.

00:15On December 8, the department was alerted by a third-party software provider that the

00:19actor had gained access to a security key, allowing it to override certain security protocols.

00:26The Treasury didn't elaborate on what sort of documents the hackers may have obtained.

00:31The department oversees sensitive data about global financial systems and estimates of

00:36China's own troubled economy.

00:38It's also responsible for implementing sanctions against Chinese firms.

00:43In a statement, the Treasury said there was no evidence the hackers still had access.

00:48Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our system and the data it holds.

00:53Over the last four years, Treasury has significantly bolstered its cyber defence and we will continue

00:59to work with both private and public sector partners to protect our financial systems

01:03from threat actors.

01:05A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington rejected any responsibility for

01:10the hack, saying Beijing firmly opposes the US's smear attacks against China.

01:16Earlier this year, a Chinese cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon penetrated

01:21multiple US telecommunications companies, allowing them to monitor texts and phone conversations

01:27of an unknown number of Americans, including President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect

01:33J.D. Vance, while in 2023, tech giant Microsoft said Chinese-based hackers had breached the

01:40email accounts of a number of US government agencies.

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