Nicholas Burns (L) and Daniel Kritenbrink (R) (Wikimedia Commons)
In a high-profile security breach, a group of hackers linked to the Beijing government have accessed the email account of the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, and Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that China was using a flaw in Microsoft Cloud to launch a cyberattack on US government officials’ email accounts.
According to the New York Times, “the hack, by a Chinese group that the company said was intent on conducting espionage, went undetected for a month.”
“Chinese hackers penetrated the email accounts of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and other State and Commerce Department officials in the weeks before Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to Beijing in June, U.S. officials said on Wednesday,” the outlet reported.
It further added that, “Based on their preliminary investigation, officials believe she was the only cabinet-level official to be successfully hacked. The hackers were not able to acquire emails in Mr. Blinken’s Microsoft 365 account, even as they got access to other State Department email boxes, officials said.”
Laura Ingraham reported this disturbing discovery, she said, “despite the Fed spending, what, 15.6 billion on cybersecurity, more than the GDP of nearly, what, 75 countries, chinese cyberspies were able to exploit a fundamental gap in Microsoft’s cloud, enabling them to hack email accounts at the State Department and other agencies. But this really should come as no surprise, because Microsoft has had a really symbiotic relationship for China for years now.”
Ingraham said that Microsoft gave the Chinese government access to the source code for its Windows operating system.
According to Wall Street Journal, aside from U.S. Secretary Gina Raimondo, two other senior Biden regime officials were hacked in the cyber-espionage attack.
“Burns and Kritenbrink are the second and third senior Biden administration officials to be identified in news reports as having their emails hacked,” the outlet reported.
More from WSJ:
Hackers linked to Beijing accessed the email account of the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, in an attack that is believed to have compromised at least hundreds of thousands of individual U.S. government emails, according to people familiar with the matter.
Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, was also hacked in the cyber-espionage attack, the people said. The two diplomats are believed to be the two senior-most officials at the State Department targeted in the alleged spying campaign disclosed last week, one of the people said.
The contours of the campaign aren’t fully known. Though limited to unclassified emails, the inboxes of Burns and Kritenbrink could have allowed the hackers to glean insights into U.S. planning for a recent string of visits to China by senior Biden administration officials, as well as internal conversations about U.S. policies toward its rival amid a period of delicate diplomacy that has been challenged repeatedly in recent months.
It appeared that Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s email account wasn’t directly infiltrated in the hack, nor were those in his circle of top advisers, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Instead, the hackers appeared to focus on a small number of senior officials responsible for managing the U.S.-China relationship.
The estimate of individual emails accessed is rough and could also grow, the people said.
“For security reasons, we will not be sharing additional information on the nature and scope of this cybersecurity incident at this time,” a State Department spokesman said.
“The Department continuously monitors and responds to activity of concern on our networks. Our investigation is ongoing, and we cannot provide further details at this time,” it added.
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