The U.S. Treasury Department announced a significant cybersecurity breach involving Chinese hackers who accessed workstations and stole documents, although no confidential data was compromised. In a communication to Congress, the department revealed that the attack affected several workstations and unclassified documents within the Treasury, executed through a security program developed by a private company, BeyondTrust.
The message indicated that the hackers gained access to a security key used by the provider to secure a cloud-based service for remote technical support to Treasury users. This allowed them to bypass security measures and remotely access some user workstations, reviewing unclassified documents held by those users.
A Treasury spokesperson confirmed that the compromised BeyondTrust service has been disabled and there is no evidence suggesting that the responsible party continues to access Treasury systems or information. In response, China denied the U.S. allegations, asserting its opposition to all forms of cyberattacks.
Meanwhile, the offshore yuan experienced a sharp decline, briefly hitting its lowest value against the U.S. dollar in over two years. The currency fell as much as 0.7% to 7.3695 per dollar, before recovering slightly to trade at 7.3416 as of 10:23 a.m. in London.