According to authorities quoted in the Washington Post, the hackers gained access to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s office as well as the Office of Financial Research and the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The US Treasury unit that oversees economic sanctions was infiltrated by Chinese government hackers, according to the Washington Post, which also identified the targets of a cyberattack that Treasury revealed earlier this week.
According to the Washington Post, which cited anonymous US officials, hackers on Wednesday attacked US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s office in addition to the Office of Financial Research and the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
According to the Post, the targeting demonstrates “Beijing’s determination to acquire intelligence on its most significant rival in the global competition for power and influence”. The officials were unidentified.
In a letter to Congress earlier this week, the department said that hackers had stolen unclassified material in a “major incident”. Which departments or users were impacted was not made clear.
The “irrational” US accusation was “without any factual basis” and constituted “smear attacks” against Beijing, according to Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, when questioned about the paper’s report.
China “combats all forms of cyberattacks”, according to the statement, which made no mention of the Washington Post’s coverage of particular targets.
According to sources cited by the Washington Post, the Chinese government is particularly interested in Chinese companies that the US government might be thinking about imposing financial sanctions on.
The most significant foreign policy obstacle
The most recent hack follows reports of past cyber events connected to China, including one that targeted US telecom networks, despite China’s denials of involvement in such assaults.
According to the Treasury letter earlier this week, BeyondTrust, a third-party cybersecurity service provider, was infiltrated by hackers.
US sanctions against Chinese companies, people, and organizations have been commonplace, and Washington has utilized them as a major instrument in its foreign policy toward Beijing.
Yellen told the Reuters news agency last month that Washington would not rule out penalties on Chinese institutions as it looks to cut off Russia’s oil earnings and access to international supplies to finance its war in Ukraine. The United States views China as its biggest foreign policy threat.
