China responsible for data breach: US Homeland Security chairman
The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security has accused China of engaging in a data breach that targeted four million US federal employees.
“All the threat indicators point to the fact that it is China, perhaps nation-state sponsored, because of the way it was done,” Rep. Michael McCaul said on Sunday.
“In my judgment this was an attack by China against the United States government,” he told CBS News. “This is the most significant data breach in US history.”
Last week, American officials said hackers had broken into the computer system of the Office of Personnel Management.
Hackers gained access to the data of some 2.7 million current government workers and about 2 million retired workers.
US federal officials claimed China was behind the massive hack.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that the accusations against Beijing were irresponsible.
“Not to carry out a deep investigation and keep using words such as 'possible' is irresponsible and unscientific,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.
McCaul also noted the hackers did the cyberattack for espionage.
“It was not done to steal credit card information. It was done to get personal information of political appointees in the federal government and federal employees, to exploit them so that later, down the road, they can use it for espionage, to either recruit spies or compromise individuals in the federal government,” he said.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Friday said President Barack Obama in his meetings with Chinese officials “has frequently… raised China’s activities in cyberspace as a significant source of concern.”
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