Hackers supported by the Chinese authorities broke into the systems of the US Treasury, gaining access to classified documents, the US Treasury Department reported. In a letter addressed to congressmen, the ministry assessed the incident as serious, the BBC reported. China has denied these accusations.
Treasury resort USA wrote in a letter to congressmen that hacker groups based in… China. The attackers allegedly bypassed security using a key used by an external service provider.
The BBC portal emphasized that the US Treasury Department was responsible for imposing sanctions on China in recent years.
Hackers were looking for information
Hackers whose activity was detected on December 2 they were to gain remote access to several workstations and some classified documents stored by users. It was not specified what these documents contained or how long hackers could have access to the system. There were speculations in the media that the attackers were not trying to steal funds from the American budget, but were looking for information of interest to them.
China has denied these accusations. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing said that the People's Republic of China “has always opposed all forms of hacker attacks,” but “is even more opposed to spreading false information against China for political purposes,” AFP reported.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Tuesday that Beijing has repeatedly “taken a (similar) position on such baseless accusations that are not supported by any evidence.”
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