Chinese APT leverages BeyondTrust API key to access US Treasury systems and documents

December 31, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability/Incident Response

The US Treasury Department said it suffered a “major cybersecurity incident” that allowed suspected Chinese threat actors to remotely access some computers and unclassified documents.

“On December 8, 2024, Treasury was informed by a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, that a malicious actor had gained access to a key used by the provider to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide a technical support to Treasury “Departmental Office (DO) End Users,” the department said in a letter briefing the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

“By accessing the stolen key, the malicious actor was able to override the security of the service, remotely access certain workstations of Treasury DO users, and gain access to certain unclassified documents maintained by those users.”

The federal agency said it is working with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and that available evidence indicates this is the work of an advanced persistent threat (APT) sponsored by the state. Chinese actor.

The Treasury Department further said it had taken the BeyondTrust service offline, adding that there was no evidence that threat actors had access to the environment.

Earlier this month, BeyondTrust revealed that it was the victim of a digital intrusion that allowed malicious actors to hack into some of its remote support SaaS instances.

The company said its investigation into the incident found that the attackers gained access to a remote support SaaS API key that allowed them to reset local app account passwords. BeyondTrust has not yet revealed how the key was obtained.

“BeyondTrust immediately revoked the API key, notified affected customers, and suspended these instances the same day while providing alternative remote support SaaS instances to these customers,” it said.

The investigation also discovered two security vulnerabilities in Privileged Remote Access (PRA) and Remote Support (RS) products (CVE-2024-12356, CVSS score: 9.8 and CVE-2024-12686, CVSS score: 6, 6), the first of which was added to CISA's Catalog of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV), citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild.

The disclosure comes as several U.S. telecommunications providers have found themselves in the crosshairs of another Chinese state-sponsored threat actor, named Salt Typhoon.

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