The US Treasury has accused China of hacking into their system after they noticed documents had been stolen in a "major incident".

Officials have claimed that Chinese hackers managed to access the department's IT system, stealing unclassified documents.

The hack is being treated as a “major cybersecurity incident” in an ongoing investigation.

The US Government became aware of the alleged cyber attack on December 8, after hackers were said to have compromised a third-party software provider, according to department officials.

The US Treasury has accused China of hacking into their system after they noticed documents had been stolen in a "major incident"

In a letter to leaders of the Senate Banking Committee, assistant treasury secretary Aditi Hardikar said that “there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information”.

However, she did not disclose the number of workstations which had been accessed or the type of document which the hackers had stolen.

The letter reads: “Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems, and the data it holds."

“Over the last four years, Treasury has significantly bolstered its cyber defence, and we will continue to work with both private and public sector partners to protect our financial system from threat actors.”

The Treasury highlighted that it only became aware of an issue once third-party software service provider BeyondTrust pointed out that hackers had acquired a key to override the system and access employees' workstations.

Since, the services have been taken down, while there is no evidence to believe that the hackers can still access department information, according to the letter.

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