Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked hackers stole roughly 60,000 emails from multiple State Department and Department of Commerce accounts earlier this summer, impacting 25 United States entities, according to a Senate staff briefing on Wednesday.
The focus of the hack was to grab information on Indo-Pacific diplomatic relations and discussions, as nine out of the ten accounts broken into belonged to staffers working on those areas of policy, with the other account focused on European diplomacy. The information stolen included the employees’ travel itineraries and diplomatic deliberations.
Hackers also managed to infiltrate the account of Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, though the extent of the breach is still unclear.
Officials at the State Department explained that the hackers obtained access to the accounts after using a token stolen from a Microsoft engineer – a statement corroborated by Microsoft.
The United States was quick to blame China for the hack, though the CCP denied any responsibility.
An anonymous State Department spokesman said the agency “takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously takes steps to ensure information is protected. Like every large organization with a global presence, we closely monitor cybersecurity conditions.”
