Prior to State Secretary Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing in June, Chinese hackers broke into the email accounts of officials from the State Department and the Department of Commerce, according to a report by the New York Times citing US officials. The investigation is underway but the US officials, on Wednesday, downplayed the idea that the Chinese hackers, who are likely to be part of the military or spy services, have stolen the sensitive information, insisting that no classified email or cloud systems were penetrated. The State Department’s cybersecurity team first discovered the intrusion.
Raimondo, who has been one of the most outspoken critics of Beijing in the administration, was among the targets, according to two U.S. officials.
Recently, she tightened export controls on China, threatening to cut off the country’s supply of US semiconductor technology if it provides the chips to Russia. Raimondo is also expected to visit China by the end of the summer, reported New York Times.
Based on their preliminary investigation, officials believe she was the only cabinet-level official to be successfully hacked. The hackers were not able to acquire emails in Blinken’s Microsoft 365 account, even as they got access to other State Department email boxes, officials said.
Multiple officials said the attack was aimed at individual email accounts, rather than a large-scale exfiltration of data, which Chinese hackers are suspected of having done before. US President Joe Biden’s administration officials declined to give a full accounting of which the hackers had targeted officials.
Earlier, on Tuesday, Microsoft revealed that the Chinese hackers with the intention to collect intelligence on the US have gained access to government email accounts.
The attack was targeted, according to a person briefed on the intrusion into the government networks, with the hackers going after specific accounts rather than carrying out a broad-brush intrusion that would suck up enormous amounts of data, as per the New York Times. Blinken’s February trip to China was postponed after the spy balloon was found hovering in US airspace. The government took action to secure the systems after discovering “anomalous activity,” the State Department said in a statement on Wednesday, and “will continue to closely monitor and quickly respond to any further activity.” According to the New York Times, Microsoft discovered that the hackers had also targeted about 25 organizations, including government agencies, after the State Department alerted the company to the hack.