AP NEWS | Published January 4, 2025
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Treasury on Friday sanctioned a Beijing-based cybersecurity company for its alleged role in multiple hacking incidents targeting critical U.S. infrastructure.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control hit Integrity Technology Group, Inc. with sanctions Friday morning, for conducting multiple hacks against U.S. victims, including incidents attributed to Flax Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored campaign that targets U.S. critical infrastructure.
The sanctions come a few days after Treasury reported that Chinese hackers remotely accessed several U.S. Treasury Department workstations and unclassified documents in a major cybersecurity incident.
The Treasury Department said it learned of the problem on Dec. 8, when a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, flagged that hackers had stolen a key “used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support” to workers.
Friday’s sanctions do not appear to be related to the Dec. 8 Treasury hack.
Treasury Acting Under Secretary Bradley Smith said the U.S. will disrupt cyber threats “as we continue working collaboratively to harden public and private sector cyber defenses.”
The sanctions block access to U.S. property and bank accounts and prevent the targeted people and companies from doing business with Americans.
U.S. officials are continuing to grapple with the fallout of a massive Chinese cyberespionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.apnews.com
RELATED: China’s Massive Hacking Campaign Targeting the US
THE EPOCH TIMES | Published January 4, 2025
China has dramatically increased its cyberattacks against the United States since Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
August 2014: Community Health Systems Hack
A state-backed hacking group in China—referred to as APT18—launched an advanced malware attack against Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, one of the nation’s largest hospital health care services.
The group succeeded in exfiltrating the sensitive personal information of more than 4.5 million patients, including their Social Security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, names, and birth dates.
November 2014: NOAA and USPS Hacks
State-backed hackers in China launched malware and DDOS attacks against several government entities, including the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Office of Personnel Management.
The personal information of more than 800,000 employees at USPS, as well as that of customers who had called customer services, was exfiltrated. NOAA officials reported that they were immediately able to restore service to four affected websites but had not reported the incident for months, which was a violation of U.S. policy.
June 2015: Office of Personnel Management Hack
The federal government’s primary hiring agency was hacked by state-backed cyber actors in China. More than a million users’ personal information, including names, addresses, and Social Security numbers, were stolen.
Those affected included current and former federal employees and contractors, as well as applicants for federal jobs and individuals listed on background check forms.
The attack was the third and largest of its kind in a matter of weeks and appeared to have specifically targeted data and applications related to U.S. security clearances. As such, the data stolen also included the financial histories and family information of those undergoing federal background checks at the time.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.theepochtimes.com
Be the first to comment