Chinese hackers breached top US officials’ private emails

Montana Chinese hackers could have been opening the private emails of the best You can introduce.S.us intrusion and negotiate officials since April 2010, based on an NBC News guide Monday, mentioning a You can introduce.S. genius endorsed and excellent wonder doc. However, it does not appear that the compromise affected any official government-issued email accounts. The Pentagon claimed that this was a “sophisticated cyberattack” by Russian hackers that may or may not have been orchestrated by the Russian government.

Google acknowledged an intrusion into the private Gmail accounts of some American officials in 2011, and the NSA briefing made clear that email accounts from other providers also were compromised.

The email espionage – codenamed “Dancing Panda” by the US before being dubbed “Legion Amethyst” – was detected in April 2010.

According to the intelligence official, the personal email accounts of “all top national security and trade officials” were targeted in the cyber attack.

The “Dancing Panda” cyber attack campaign pointed to in the 2014 NSA briefing was one of over 30 “intrusion sets” carried out by China that U.S. intelligence revealed last year in classified documents.

While the attack did not breach officials’ secure government email accounts, hackers reportedly used their access to mine officials’ personal address books and then “exploit thei[ir] social networks” by sending malware to friend and other contacts, including coworkers.

U.S. security experts suspect this newly uncovered email hacking is merely the latest in a string of massive data security breaches backed by China (although the Chinese government has consistently denied responsibility for all of them).

More than 21 million people had their sensitive background and security clearance information stolen when Chinese hackers breached Office of Personnel Management (OPM) databases in early 2014. NBC obtained a “top secret document” from a 2014 NSA briefing alleging the email hacks were still happening at the time of the event.

The targeted officials were not publicly identified.