By AJ Vicens and Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON, Aug 28 (Reuters) – U.S. officials are correcting earlier statements that several government agencies were hacked by Chinese hackers, now saying that the organizations were among the hackers’ targets.
In a newly edited statement, the Department of Justice said on Friday that the U.S. Senate, the Federal Reserve, NASA and others were “among the targets of QTFY,” a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group that officials identified on Wednesday during an internet domain seizure operation.
A previous version of the statement said the government agencies had been among the hackers’ victims.
A note left at the bottom of the newly edited statement said that “Edits have been made to ensure this press release accurately reflects the government’s allegations in the affidavit in support of the domain seizures.”
The DOJ said on Friday it made a correction to the press release because the August 26 release “described all agencies as victims whereas the government’s affidavit made clear that all were targeted but only some were compromised.”
The distinction matters because it narrows the scope of confirmed breaches in what the DOJ described as a years-long Chinese cyber-espionage campaign against U.S. government agencies, defense contractors and other sensitive targets.
AFFIDAVIT DETAILS TARGETS SINCE 2018
According to the FBI affidavit released alongside the original statement, since at least 2018 the hackers “targeted” U.S. federal networks including those of NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Senate.
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’s patching of targeted software.
The affidavit alleges that in September 2024, the hackers carried out “computer intrusions” at three “DOE National Laboratories, NIH, an HHS agency, and a U.S. security device manufacturer,” and referred to the entities as “victims.”
A separate joint cybersecurity advisory issued by the FBI, National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command’s Cyber National Mission Force published on Wednesday listed successful data thefts from unnamed defense contractors, financial institutions and universities in May 2024, and unsuccessful attempts to access networks of the U.S. Senate and a U.S. hospital in March 2026.
Messages seeking clarification from the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were not immediately returned on Friday.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. In response to Wednesday’s announcement, an embassy spokesperson said the U.S. uses cybersecurity to “smear or discredit China” and that China “opposes the U.S. 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.”
(Reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington and AJ Vicens in Detroit; Editing by Franklin Paul, Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis)
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