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Washington: Hackers linked to Beijing contacted the US ambassador to China Nicholas BurnsThe Wall Street Journal (WJ) reported Thursday that the email account in an espionage operation is believed to have compromised at least hundreds of thousands of individual US government emails.
The report, citing people familiar with the matter, said Daniel Kreitenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, was hacked in the broader spying operation that Microsoft disclosed earlier this month.
Asked about the reported breach of the diplomats’ accounts, the State Department declined to give any details and said its investigation into the spying operation was still ongoing.
Before the WSJ report appeared, Krettenbrink was asked at a congressional hearing on US policy toward China if he could rule out that emails of his or his employees were the targets of the Microsoft hack.
“I can’t comment on the investigation that’s currently being conducted by the FBI, but no, I wouldn’t rule it out,” Kreitenbrink said.
Burns and Kreitenbrink join US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo as the only publicly exposed victims of the spying campaign, prompting the top diplomat in Washington to warn his Chinese counterpart.
China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report, but China’s foreign ministry has previously described the earlier accusations as “misinformation”.
Microsoft said last week that Chinese hackers He embezzled one of his digital keys and used a flaw in his code to steal emails from US government agencies and other clients.
The company did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the Wall Street Journal report.
The hack has cast such a spotlight on Microsoft’s security practices that officials and lawmakers have called on the Redmond, Washington company to make its highest level of digital auditing, also called logging, available to all of its customers for free.
Microsoft said in a statement late Thursday that it accepts the criticism.
Last week, White House National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge said Microsoft’s cloud security breach “affected unclassified systems,” without elaborating.
“The officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerabilities in their cloud service,” Hodge added.
A State Department spokesperson said in a statement at the time that the State Department “detected unusual activity” and “took immediate steps to secure our systems.”
The report, citing people familiar with the matter, said Daniel Kreitenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, was hacked in the broader spying operation that Microsoft disclosed earlier this month.
Asked about the reported breach of the diplomats’ accounts, the State Department declined to give any details and said its investigation into the spying operation was still ongoing.
Before the WSJ report appeared, Krettenbrink was asked at a congressional hearing on US policy toward China if he could rule out that emails of his or his employees were the targets of the Microsoft hack.
“I can’t comment on the investigation that’s currently being conducted by the FBI, but no, I wouldn’t rule it out,” Kreitenbrink said.
Burns and Kreitenbrink join US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo as the only publicly exposed victims of the spying campaign, prompting the top diplomat in Washington to warn his Chinese counterpart.
China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report, but China’s foreign ministry has previously described the earlier accusations as “misinformation”.
Microsoft said last week that Chinese hackers He embezzled one of his digital keys and used a flaw in his code to steal emails from US government agencies and other clients.
The company did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the Wall Street Journal report.
The hack has cast such a spotlight on Microsoft’s security practices that officials and lawmakers have called on the Redmond, Washington company to make its highest level of digital auditing, also called logging, available to all of its customers for free.
Microsoft said in a statement late Thursday that it accepts the criticism.
Last week, White House National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge said Microsoft’s cloud security breach “affected unclassified systems,” without elaborating.
“The officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerabilities in their cloud service,” Hodge added.
A State Department spokesperson said in a statement at the time that the State Department “detected unusual activity” and “took immediate steps to secure our systems.”
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