The US Department of Justice clarifies that the US Senate and Federal Reserve were targets but were not successfully hacked.<\/p>\n
Published On 29 Aug 202629 Aug 2026<\/p>\n
United States officials have corrected earlier statements that several government agencies were attacked by Chinese hackers, now saying instead that the organisations were only among the hackers\u2019 targets.<\/p>\n
In a newly edited statement on Friday, the US Department of Justice said that the Senate, the Federal Reserve, NASA and other agencies were \u201camong the targets of QTFY\u201d, a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group.<\/p>\n
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A previous version of the statement said the government agencies had been among the hackers\u2019 victims.<\/p>\n
A note at the bottom of the newly revised statement says: \u201cEdits have been made to ensure this press release accurately reflects the government\u2019s allegations in the affidavit in support of the domain seizures.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Justice Department said on Friday it made a correction to the news release because the August 26 release \u201cdescribed all agencies as victims whereas the government\u2019s affidavit made clear that all were targeted but only some were compromised\u201d.<\/p>\n
The distinction matters because it narrows the scope of confirmed breaches.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department has accused Chinese actors of a years-long cyber-espionage campaign against US government agencies, defence contractors and other sensitive targets.<\/p>\n
According to an affidavit from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released alongside the original statement, the hackers have \u201ctargeted\u201d US federal networks since at least 2018.<\/p>\n
Those targets include NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US Senate.<\/p>\n
A footnote in the affidavit said that the FBI investigated the targeting of NASA and found that the attempted breach of NASA was unsuccessful due to the agency\u2019s patching of targeted software.<\/p>\n
The affidavit alleges that in September 2024, the hackers carried out \u201ccomputer intrusions\u201d at three \u201cDOE National Laboratories, NIH, an HHS agency, and a US security device manufacturer\u201d. It referred to the entities as \u201cvictims\u201d.<\/p>\n
A separate joint cybersecurity advisory issued by the FBI, National Security Agency and US Cyber Command\u2019s Cyber National Mission Force, published on Wednesday, listed successful data thefts from unnamed defence contractors, financial institutions and universities in May 2024.<\/p>\n
It also noted unsuccessful attempts to access the networks for the US Senate and a hospital in March 2026.<\/p>\n
Messages seeking clarification from the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were not immediately returned on Friday.<\/p>\n
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters news agency on Friday.<\/p>\n
In response to Wednesday\u2019s announcement, an embassy spokesperson said the US uses cybersecurity to \u201csmear or discredit China\u201d.<\/p>\n
It added that China \u201copposes the US overstretching the concept of national security and using it as a pretext to impose discriminatory restrictions on Chinese companies and will firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US Department of Justice clarifies that the US Senate and Federal Reserve were targets but were not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1174905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5311],"tags":[2002,1234,12,285,8272,53,49,978,286,659],"class_list":["post-1174904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-espionage","tag-government","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-science-and-technology","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-canada","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1174905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}