Saturday | January 11, 2025
Chinese hackers breached the US government office that reviews foreign investments for national security risks, three US officials familiar with the matter told CNN.
As tensions between the world’s two superpowers continue to rise, the heist, which has not been previously revealed, highlights Beijing’s significant interest in spying on a US government institution that has extensive authority to prevent Chinese investment in the US.
The hack was a component of the hackers’ larger intrusion into the Treasury Department’s unclassified system. In December, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), the office that the hackers attacked, was given more power to examine real estate transactions close to US military installations. The possibility that the Chinese government or its proxies could use land acquisitions to spy on those locations has become a growing concern for US lawmakers and national security experts.
The new Trump administration will face challenges from a series of purported Chinese cyber-espionage efforts that have rocked the US government in the past year. In order to eavesdrop on the phone conversations of prominent US political players, including President-elect Donald Trump, a different Chinese hacking organization dug deep into US telecom networks.
Treasury told Congress last week about the intrusion of unclassified information, and US officials are rushing to determine whether there may be any national security repercussions.
According to two US officials who spoke to CNN, the hackers also targeted Treasury’s sanctions branch, which just last week imposed sanctions on a Chinese corporation for its alleged involvement in cyberattacks. The sanctions office was attacked, according to the Washington Post. It was not immediately clear what information the hackers stole from Treasury computers.
According to one US official, US officials are examining each document that the hackers obtained and will analyze the information to determine the overall impact on national security. Although there is no proof that secret material was accessed, there is worry that the unclassified material might be cobbled together to give the Chinese valuable intelligence.
Instead of answering inquiries regarding the hackers’ targeting of CFIUS, a Treasury spokesman provided an earlier statement from the agency.
According to a Treasury spokesperson, the hackers were “able to remotely access several Treasury user workstations and certain unclassified documents maintained by those users” after breaching a “third-party service provider” last month.
The statement added that there is no proof the hackers have maintained access to Treasury systems or data and that the department has collaborated “with law enforcement partners across the government to ascertain the impact of this incident.”
The representative stated that “Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems and the data it holds.” “To defend our financial system from threat actors, Treasury has greatly strengthened its cyber defense over the past four years, and we will keep collaborating with partners in the public and private sectors.”
The Chinese Embassy’s spokeswoman in Washington, DC, Liu Pengyu, restated China’s long-standing assertions that it conducts cyber operations.
According to Liu’s email, “President Xi Jinping stated that there is no evidence that supports the irrational claim of the so-called ‘cyberattacks from China,'” during his meeting with President Biden in Lima [last] year.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNBC the hack is “not something that builds confidence in our relationship [with China]” and that she raised the issue with her Chinese counterpart in a call this week.
Yellen leads CFIUS, which includes other Cabinet heads such as the secretaries of defense and homeland security. Once an obscure office, CFIUS has grown in stature as US-China competition has grown more complicated and extended to business transactions in remote parts of the US.
CNN first reported on a CFIUS review in 2023 of a company that bought up hundreds of millions of dollars of land in a county near a key Air Force base in California.
The incoming Trump administration is set to include multiple Cabinet members or other senior staff who have called for tougher measures on China over national security concerns, including incoming national security adviser Rep. Mike Waltz and Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice for secretary of state.
US military and spy agencies already engage in offensive cyber operations against China, but Waltz says he wants more action to be taken.
“America can’t afford to just play defense on cyber anymore,” Waltz posted on X last month. “We’ve got to go on the offensive and impose COSTS on those who are stealing our technology and attacking our infrastructure.”