Republican lawmakers are calling for answers from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen after the department was hacked by one of China’s intelligence agencies.
In a letter to Yellen, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Rep. French Hill (R-AR) share their concerns about protocols at the department for protecting sensitive information and ask for a briefing on the “major cybersecurity incident.”
As Townhall previously reported, hackers remotely accessed workstations and unclassified documents through a third-party software service provider.
“We write regarding the major cybersecurity incident that the Department of the Treasury disclosed to the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees yesterday involving a China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat actor breaking into Treasury’s computer systems and remotely accessing information maintained by Treasury users," wrote Scott, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and Hill, House Financial Services Committee Vice Chair.
"This breach of federal government information is extremely concerning," the letter added. "As you know, Treasury maintains some of the most highly sensitive information on U.S. persons throughout government, including tax information, business beneficial ownership, and suspicious activity reports. This information must be vigilantly protected from theft or surveillance by our foreign adversaries, including the Chinese Communist Party, who seek to harm the United States. As such, the fact that a CCP-sponsored APT actor was able to access Treasury’s information systems is unacceptable and raises serious questions about the protocols for safeguarding sensitive federal government information from future cybersecurity incidents."
The lawmakers asked for a briefing no later than Jan. 10 to discuss specific details about the incident, the type of information that was compromised, whether Treasury was aware before the incident about vulnerabilities in its system, and what steps the department is taking to ensure it is not hacked again.