Chinese hackers breach US ambassador's emails -WSJ
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[July 21, 2023]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Beijing-linked hackers accessed the
email account of the U.S. ambassador to China in an espionage operation
thought to have compromised at least hundreds of thousands of U.S.
government emails, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Thursday.
Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, was
also hacked in the wider spying operation disclosed this month by
Microsoft, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Asked about the reported breach of the two diplomats' accounts, the
State Department declined to give any details and said its investigation
of the spying operation was going on.
U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns' embassy in Beijing referred Reuters to
remarks made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken this month when he
said the U.S. has "consistently made clear to China as well as to other
countries that any action that targets the U.S. Government or U.S.
companies, American citizens, is of deep concern to us, and we will take
appropriate action in response."
A spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington said China consistently
opposed hacking and it rejected "groundless" speculation about the
source of cyber attacks.
"China firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all
forms. This position is consistent and clear," spokesperson Liu Pengyu
said in an emailed response to Reuters.
"Identifying the source of cyber attacks is a complex technical issue.
We hope that relevant sides will adopt a professional and responsible
attitude ... rather than make groundless speculations and allegations."
Before the WSJ report appeared, Kritenbrink was asked at a congressional
hearing on U.S. China policy whether he could rule out that his or his
staff's emails were targeted in the Microsoft hack.
"I can't comment on an investigation that's underway being conducted by
the FBI, but no, I will not rule it out," Kritenbrink said.
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U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns
speaks during a climate finance roundtable discussion at the U.S.
Embassy in Beijing, Saturday, July 8, 2023. Mark Schiefelbein/Pool
via REUTERS/File Photo
Burns and Kritenbrink join U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo as
the only publicly named victims of the espionage campaign, which
prompted a warning by Washington's top diplomat to his Chinese
counterpart.
FLAW IN CODE
Microsoft said last week that Chinese hackers misappropriated one of
its digital keys and used a flaw in its code to steal emails from
U.S. government agencies and other clients.
The company did not immediately return a message seeking comment on
the WSJ report.
The breach has thrown Microsoft's security practices under scrutiny,
with officials and lawmakers calling on the Redmond,
Washington-based company to make its top level of digital auditing,
also called logging, available to all its customers free of charge.
Microsoft said in a statement late on Thursday that it was taking
the criticism on board.
Last week, White House National Security Council spokesperson Adam
Hodge said an intrusion in Microsoft's cloud security "affected
unclassified systems," without elaborating.
"Officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and
vulnerability in their cloud service," Hodge added.
The State Department "detected anomalous activity" and "took
immediate steps to secure our systems," a department spokesperson
said in a statement at the time.
(Reporting by Shubhendu Deshmukh in Bengaluru and Raphael Satter,
Simon Lewis, David Brunnstrom and Chris Sanders, in Washington;
Additional reporting by Laurie Chen in Beijing; Editing by Susan
Heavey, Stephen Coates and Jamie Freed)
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