The exterior of the U.S. Treasury Building joins other government financial institutions in bailing out their account holders after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in Washington, D.C., on March 13, 2023.
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Chinese state-backed hackers broke into the U.S. Treasury Department earlier this month and stole documents from its workstations, according to a letter to lawmakers provided to Reuters on Monday.
The letter said hackers compromised a third-party cybersecurity service provider and were able to access unclassified documents, calling it a “major incident.”
According to the letter, the hackers “gained access to keys used by a vendor to secure a cloud-based service that provides remote technical support to Treasury Department end users. By accessing the stolen keys, Threat actors were able to override the security of the service, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain non-confidential documents maintained by these users.
After receiving an alert from cybersecurity vendor BeyondTrust, the Treasury Department said it was working with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to assess the impact of the hack.
BeyondTrust, CISA and the FBI did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
