The Treasury Department on Friday imposed sanctions on a Beijing-based cybersecurity firm for helping Chinese hackers penetrate U.S. communications systems and conduct surveillance across four continents.
In a statement, the ministry said a company called Integrity Technology Group assisted a Chinese state-sponsored hacker group known as Flax Typhoon in a campaign to infiltrate overseas networks from summer 2022 to 2023. “Send and receive information periodically from Integrity Tech.” infrastructure. “
The move comes after the Treasury Department said in a letter to lawmakers this week that Chinese intelligence had infiltrated systems and accessed government employees’ workstations and unclassified documents in what appears to be espionage. It was done after.
A ministry spokesperson said it was unclear whether Flux Typhoon was involved in the attack on Treasury systems or whether the sanctions were simply part of a larger operation to disrupt China’s cyber capabilities. I didn’t.
The sanctions also have ties to Chinese intelligence and allow a group known as Salt Typhoon to hack into U.S. communications networks and target phone conversations and text messages of numerous political figures, including President-elect Donald Trump. It also follows last year’s more damaging revelations about the J. Trump.
Like Salt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon is one of the few groups owned by Microsoft publicly identified It is believed to have ties to Chinese intelligence agencies and to be involved in a series of state-sponsored cyber attacks. The group has been active since 2021 and appears to be targeting Taiwan and the United States, according to the Congressional Research Service.
“The Treasury Department will not hesitate to hold malicious cyber attackers and their perpetrators accountable for their actions,” Bradley T. Smith, acting assistant secretary of the Treasury Department, said in a statement. “The United States will utilize all available tools to thwart these threats, while continuing to work together to strengthen the cyber defenses of the public and private sectors.”
In September, the F.B.I. said The company took down a network of 200,000 consumer devices in the United States and abroad that were infected with malware and weaponized by Flax Typhoon.
The sanctions announced Friday essentially prohibit financial institutions and individuals from doing business with Integrity Technology Group, and freeze the company’s assets in the United States.
It was not immediately clear what the Treasury Department’s breach entailed, since the agency has the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is responsible for imposing sanctions and determining which individuals constitute a threat. The Treasury Department has become an attractive target for state-sponsored hackers. to national security.
