The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on a cybersecurity company based in Beijing on Friday for its suspected involvement in numerous cyber attacks targeting critical infrastructure in the United States. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control targeted Integrity Technology Group, Inc. with sanctions early Friday, citing multiple hacking incidents against U.S. entities, some of which have been linked to Flax Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored cyber campaign focused on U.S. critical infrastructure.
These sanctions were announced just days after the Treasury revealed that Chinese hackers had gained remote access to several workstations within the U.S. Treasury Department, compromising unclassified documents in a significant cybersecurity breach. Bradley Smith, the Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury, pledged to combat cyber threats while enhancing cybersecurity measures across both public and private sectors.
The Treasury Department first became aware of the issue on December 8 when a third-party software provider, BeyondTrust, alerted authorities to a breach wherein hackers had obtained a crucial key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service necessary for providing technical support to employees. The sanctions imposed on Friday are separate from the December 8 hack.
Smith reiterated the U.S. government’s commitment to thwarting cyber threats and fortifying cyber defenses through collaborative efforts. Concurrently, American officials are still contending with the aftermath of a substantial Chinese cyber espionage initiative dubbed Salt Typhoon, which granted Chinese authorities access to private communications, including texts and phone conversations involving an undisclosed number of U.S. citizens.
The sanctions implemented by the Treasury Department restrict access to U.S. assets and financial accounts for the sanctioned individuals and entities while barring them from engaging in any business transactions with Americans. The ongoing struggle to address the repercussions of the Salt Typhoon cyber campaign underscores the persistent challenges posed by foreign cyber threats and underscores the critical importance of bolstering national cybersecurity measures to safeguard sensitive information and critical infrastructure.
