Report: Chinese Hacking Group Silk Typhoon Behind Treasury Department Breach

Chinese hacking group Silk Typhoon is reportedly believed to have been behind the December hack of the U.S. Treasury Department.

Silk Typhoon is believed to have stolen a digital key from a third-party service provider and used it to access unclassified information, Bloomberg reported Wednesday (Jan. 8), citing unnamed sources.

During the incident, the hackers accessed documents stored on laptops and desktop computers, according to the report.

It was reported Dec. 30 that the Treasury Department workstations were breached by China-backed hackers earlier that month, that there was no evidence that the hacker still had access to Treasury systems or information, and that the department was working to assess the impact of the attack with the help of the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

In another, separate case, the U.S. State Department said Jan. 3 that the U.S. imposed sanctions on Beijing-based cybersecurity company Integrity Technology Group, which is a People’s Republic of China (PRC) government contractor, saying the company was involved in malicious botnet operations targeting U.S. victims.

In that case, PRC-based hackers known as Flax Typhoon were working for Integrity Tech when they targeted critical infrastructure in the U.S. and overseas, the State Department said.

In October, it was reported that U.S. government agencies and some companies had begun investigating the possibility that Chinese hackers targeted American telecommunications companies.

U.S. cyber officials have said that by burrowing into America’s critical infrastructure, Chinese hackers aim to disrupt critical services to hinder a U.S. military response during any future crisis.

Some of the most sophisticated and damaging cyberattacks in history took place in 2024, PYMNTS reported Dec. 27. The attacks ranged from ransomware that crippled critical infrastructure to data breaches that compromised millions of user records.

Eighty-two percent of eCommerce merchants suffered cyberattacks or data breaches in the past year, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Nuvei collaboration, “Fraud Management in Online Transactions.”

The report also found that 47% of the businesses had lost both revenue and customers due to fraud in the previous 12 months, while 68% saw a drop in customer satisfaction that they attributed to security breaches.