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A Chinese cyber attack resulted in the US ambassador to Beijing’s emails being compromised.
The attack, which was first identified last week, was identified as a highly sophisticated attack from China that led to the emails of a number of US officials being compromised.
Now, new reports have shown that Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to Beijing, is one of the officials affected in the attack.
Other affected officials include Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for east Asia, as well as Gina Raimondo, US Commerce Secretary.
It is believed that Gina Raimondo was targeted due to Iran-related sanctions her department had been imposing on China.
China responded to the sanctions, saying: “The US action lacks factual basis and due process, harming the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises and individuals.
“China will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises and individuals.”
However, according to quotes from US officials via The Guardian, the three named above are the most senior targets, but the number of emails breached in the attack could be in the hundreds of thousands.
“For security reasons, we will not be sharing additional information on the nature and scope of this cyber security incident at this time.”
“The department continuously monitors and responds to activity of concern on our networks,” the spokesperson said. “Our investigation is ongoing, and we cannot provide further details at this time.”
Hackers reportedly exploited a flaw in Microsoft’s cloud computing service; however, the tech giant said that the issue had since been fixed.
Microsoft has identified the group as Storm-0558, a “China-based threat actor with espionage objectives”.
Microsoft described the group as highly sophisticated and well resourced, saying that it first identified the campaign on 16 June 2023 and found that when it was launched on 15 May 2023, “no other environment was impacted”.
“Microsoft has successfully blocked this campaign from Storm-0558. As with any observed nation-state actor activity, Microsoft has directly notified targeted or compromised customers, providing them with important information needed to secure their environments,” it said.
It has been theorised that hackers could have gained access during US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China last month, gaining information on US preparations and internal discussions of the meetings that were held during the visit.
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