WASHINGTON – China-linked hackers accessed the email account of US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns as part of a recent intelligence-gathering campaign, two US officials familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.
The hackers also breached the email account of Daniel Kritenbrink, the undersecretary of state for East Asia, the officials said. Kritenbrink recently traveled with Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China.
The breach, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, was limited to the unclassified email accounts of diplomats, the officials said.
The email account of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was also accessed, according to the officials.
The Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.
Blinken in June went to China for a two-day trip in an effort to defuse tensions between Beijing and Washington.
The secretary of state also met with Chinese diplomat Wang Yi during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia earlier this month.
That meeting was designed in part to “manage competition responsibly by reducing the risk of misperception and miscalculation,” a State Department spokesperson said. said at the time.
More details about the breach of the diplomats’ email accounts were not immediately available.
Last week, officials confirmed China-based hackers broke into State Department and Commerce Department email accounts, but did not say how many people were affected. The Federal Agency for Infrastructure Security and Cybersecurity said it first learned of the hacking campaign in mid-June and that the campaign lasted for around a month.
After State and Commerce Department officials said people’s accounts at their agencies were breached, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin urged US officials to provide more details.
“The US side should account for its cyber attacks as soon as possible, instead of spreading false information to divert attention,” he said at a briefing on July 13, according to the state-owned China News Service.
Blinken at a press conference last week in Indonesia declined to say how the United States would respond, but said immediate steps were taken to protect its systems.
“I cannot discuss the details of our response beyond that, and most critically, this incident remains under investigation,” Blinken said.
“Overall, we have consistently made it clear to China, as well as other countries, that any action that targets the US government or US companies, US citizens, we care deeply about, and we will take appropriate action in response,” he said, according to a transcript of your comments.
In April, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that “the scale of the Chinese cyberthreat is unparalleled.”
“They have a larger hacking program than any other major nation combined and have stolen more of our personal and corporate data than all other nations, large or small, combined,” he said at the time.
