US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made it clear to Chinese diplomat Wang Yi that any action against the American government, companies, or citizens will be treated with great concern and action will be taken “to hold those responsible accountable.”
Blinken’s comments refer to a major snooping case revealed by Microsoft that said a China-based group hacked the emails of a bunch of senior US officials including Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo.
On Tuesday, Microsoft revealed that a stealthy Chinese hacking operation had exploited a secret flaw in a piece of the company’s authentication software in order to covertly break into email accounts belonging to 25 unnamed organizations.
Blinken made his comments during a meeting with Wang Yi in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.
After the news of the hacking broke, several US officials acknowledged that their emails were compromised during the attack, including personnel at the State Department and the US House of Representatives.
The Chinese foreign ministry, however, dismissed the claims, calling them “disinformation.”
Raimondo’s department has implemented a series of export control policies against China, curbing the transfer of semiconductors and other sensitive technologies.
A Commerce Department spokesperson said on Wednesday that Microsoft had notified the agency of “a compromise to Microsoft’s Office 365 system, and the Department took immediate action to respond.” But the spokesperson declined to comment on an intrusion against Raimondo specifically.
Blinken and Yi met in Jakarta on the sidelines of the ASEAN-plus-three foreign minister talks in the Indonesian capital.
The meeting in Jakarta come a month after Blinken travelled to Beijing, making it the first time a top US diplomat visited the country in years. Blinken had also held meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as Wang and Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
Tensions between the world’s two largest economies have soared in the recent past over issues like China’s assertiveness in the region including Taiwan and sweeping restrictions imposed by the United States on exports of its advanced semiconductors.
Hidden-Syndicate on July 14th, 2023 at 14:12 UTC »
It seems that there is a faction within the state department that leaks these little reports every time a US official meets with a chinese official. There hasn’t been a meeting this year that wasn’t overshadowed by another revelation about Chinese abuses or aggression.
I can’t tell if it’s the state department doing this as part of a larger campaign to keep the Chinese on their back foot publicity wise, or a rouge faction within the state department that is trying to derail any agreement or ramping down of tensions. There’s no reason why this report could have been buried for a week but it was released the day after Blinken meets his chinese counterpart in Indonesia.
It just feels purposeful.
Sachs-2021 on July 14th, 2023 at 08:41 UTC »
After SolarWind supply chain attack, they made a whole drama about taking drastic steps to secure sensitive emails. In 2023 summer, back to back infiltration from Russia/China lol. At this point, they've to get rid of Microsoft as a subsidiary and go in house. On the other hand, NSA seems to never get caught. Just internal leak disaster. It is all a shit show lol
The-first-laugh on July 14th, 2023 at 07:50 UTC »
SS: Blinken has stated that strict action will be taken against the Chinese hackers that hacked the top US officials E-mail accounts.
Microsoft, which provides email facilities, has stated that the Chinese hackers had breached and remained undetected for a month before they were detected and subsequently blocked.
China gave a very interesting response that US is the biggest/greatest hacker and hence shouldn't complain.
Will be quite interesting for now as US seems to want a sort of detente with China and re-establish dialogue between the 2 countries.