U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of (D-Illinois), the ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said that the hacking program linked to the CCP has affected many individuals, including government officials. Krishnamoorthi tweeted on Thursday that the U.S. has to upgrade its security, so this no longer happens.
"The CCP’s hacking program affects everyone, including a number of government officials and even members of my own staff. It is imperative that we strengthen our cyber security," Krishnamoorthi said.
Cyber attackers associated with the CCP gained unauthorized access to the email account of Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, the Wall Street Journal reported. The attack is suspected to have compromised a significant number of individual U.S. government emails, estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. The Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Daniel Kritenbrink was also a victim of the recent cyber attack.
Neither Secretary of State Antony Blinken's email account nor those of his top advisors were involved in the hack, according to the WSJ. CCP hackers focused instead on a smaller group of senior officials responsible for overseeing the U.S.-China relationship, the WSJ reported.
CNN reported that a U.S. official said that the initial difficulty faced by government officials and Microsoft analysts in identifying the entry point of the hackers into the email accounts indicated that they were up against a highly sophisticated hacking team. CNN stated that over the past few years, the U.S. has consistently identified China as the foremost advanced adversary in cyberspace, an arena that has been a consistent source of bilateral tension between the two countries.
Despite the State Department leading the attempt to strengthen diplomatic relations with China, Taiwan disagreements, the Ukraine war, Chinese cooperation with Cuba, and continued spying, specifically the CCP’s surveillance balloon incident, have led to the relationship quickly worsening, according to the WSJ.
The WSJ reported that Biden administration officials have expressed confidence in Microsoft's assessment connecting the hack to a Chinese hacking group, although the U.S. has not officially attributed the hack to the CCP. China has refuted these accusations and, in turn, accused the U.S. of widespread global espionage activities.
