Chinese hackers attempted to gather intelligence from the State Department by targeting individual emails ahead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Beijing in June, officials said.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed during a press briefing on Wednesday that hackers breached the department's systems but could not provide any further details or attribute the hacks to China. However, U.S. officials anonymously told the New York Times that the hacks, most likely connected to China's military or spy services, only targeted individual email accounts and did not attempt to extract large amounts of data.
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No classified email or cloud systems were penetrated, and officials downplayed the threat of any critical information having been stolen.
The attempt to breach the email accounts, which began in May, was disclosed by Microsoft on Tuesday as a result of the company's investigation. Microsoft found that hackers had targeted close to 25 organizations, including the State Department and other government agencies.
The State Department discovered the hack on June 16 and informed Microsoft immediately, officials said, which alerted the company to the hacking campaign. Blinken left for China that evening.
Blinken's trip was critical to U.S.-China relations, as it was the first visit to China from a U.S. secretary of state in five years. Blinken had planned to visit in February but postponed the trip after the U.S. shot down a Chinese balloon suspected of spying on nuclear military sites. The goal of the June meeting was to establish communications and improve relationships between the two nations.
The secretary himself hailed the talks as an "important start" that would let the two countries close the book on the balloon episode. However, Republicans have used the visit as an example of the Biden administration "appeasing" China.
A senior State Department official told the New York Times that the Microsoft hack did not initially appear to be directly related to Blinken's trip. However, the investigation into what material, if any, was obtained by hackers is still in the early stages.
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Microsoft determined that hacks started on May 15 and went undetected until June 16. The company also stated that the hackers appeared to target specific accounts rather than launching a broad intrusion and no longer have access. However, Microsoft did not disclose how many accounts may have been compromised by Chinese hackers.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman told the Associated Press that any accusation of government involvement was “disinformation."