BREAKING: US Treasury hacked by China in 'major incident': report

Hackers from China were able to hack the United States Treasury Department earlier this month and steal documents from workstations at the agency, according to a new report.  

The hackers were able to gain "access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) end users. With access to the stolen key, the threat actor was able to override the service’s security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users," according to a letter sent to lawmakers obtained by Reuters. The hackers were reportedly state-sponsored.

The letter referred to the hack as a "major incident." The New York Times reported that on December 8, software service BeyondTrust informed the agency that the Chinese hacker was able to obtain the security to gain remote access to some workstations at the Treasury Department.  

The hacker was able to obtain unclassified documents during the incident. “Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems, and the data it holds,” the department said in the letter. “Over the last four years, Treasury has significantly bolstered its cyber defense, and we will continue to work with both private and public sector partners to protect our financial system from threat actors."

The service that was compromised has since been taken offline and it appears as though the hackers do not have access to more department information. The hack was attributed to a state-sponsored Chinese actor.