U.S. officials are correcting earlier statements that several government agencies were hacked by Chinese hackers, now saying that the organisations were among the hackers’ targets.
Senate. Because the August 26 release “described all agencies as victims whereas the government’s affidavit made clear that all were targeted but only some were compromised, the DOJ said on Friday it made a correction to the press release. Because it narrows the scope of confirmed breaches in what the DOJ described as a years-long Chinese cyber-espionage campaign against U.S. government agencies, defense contractors and other sensitive targets, the distinction matters. A footnote in the affidavit said that the FBI investigated the targeting of NASA and found that the attempted breach of NASA was unsuccessful due to the agency’s patching of targeted software.
Senate, the Federal Reserve, NASA and others were “among the targets of QTFY,” a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group that officials identified on Wednesday during an internet domain seizure operation. A previous version of the statement said the government agencies had been among the hackers’ victims. A note left at the bottom of the newly edited statement said that “Edits have been made to ensure this press release accurately reflects the government’s allegations in the affidavit in support of the domain seizures. Since at least 2018 the hackers “targeted” U.S. federal networks including those of NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S, according to the FBI affidavit released alongside the original statement. In response to Wednesday’s announcement, an embassy spokesperson said the U.S. uses cybersecurity to “smear or discredit China” and that China “opposes the U.S. overstretching the concept of national security and using it as a pretext to impose discriminatory restrictions on Chinese companies and will firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.”
In a newly edited statement, the Department of Justice said on Friday that the U.S.
