{"id":222164,"date":"2026-08-27T12:14:49","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T12:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/us-says-chinese-hackers-broke-into-doj-nasa-federal-reserve-senate-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T12:14:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T12:14:49","slug":"us-says-chinese-hackers-broke-into-doj-nasa-federal-reserve-senate-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/us-says-chinese-hackers-broke-into-doj-nasa-federal-reserve-senate-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"US says Chinese hackers broke into DOJ, NASA, Federal Reserve, Senate – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2212 U.S. officials said Aug. 26 that it \u200chas disrupted a Chinese hacking operation that it believes is responsible for cyber break-ins at the departments of Justice and Energy as well as NASA, the \u2060Federal Reserve, the Senate and other sensitive U.S. government agencies.
In a statement, the Justice Department announced<\/a> that it has seized internet domains used by two hacking \u200cplatforms, \u2060dubbed \u201cQScan\u201d and \u201cQTRouter,\u201d which it said were used in the penetration campaign by the Beijing government.
As described in court documents unsealed in the Southern District of California, hackers from a People\u2019s Republic of China state-sponsored group known as \u201cQTFY,\u201d employed by China-based Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company, allegedly “created and operated” the two hacking platforms and used them to burrow into U.S. target networks and then cover their tracks.
Among the victims of QTFY’s computer intrusion activity, the Justice Department documents alleged, are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Federal Reserve, Department of Energy, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Senate.
In a statement to USA TODAY, the Chinese embassy in Washington said Beijing “firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with the law. We urge the US side to stop using cybersecurity issues to smear or discredit China.”
The embassy also said China “will firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies” in response to any U.S. efforts to impose punitive restrictions on them based on accusations of hacking.
\u201cState-sponsored malicious hackers preying on America\u2019s critical infrastructure will be stopped and prosecuted. We are here to ensure security for the American people and will use every tool we have to keep that promise,\u201d Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.
Blanche said federal law enforcement “investigated and disabled the PRC\u2019s malicious software,” in the latest in a series of technical operations to dismantle “indiscriminate hacking activities sponsored by the People\u2019s Republic of China.\u201d
FBI Director Kash Patel<\/a> said the bureau played a key role in the disruption of “a global botnet and hacking platform used by Chinese state-sponsored hackers to target U.S. critical infrastructure.”
In support of President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s Cyber Strategy for America, Patel said, “the FBI is surging efforts to shape adversary behavior and defend the homeland in cyberspace.\u201d\u00a0
U.S. officials did not comment on the potential damage done by the cyber-spying effort and how long it was going on before being disrupted. Such damage assessments are traditionally deemed classified and not shared publicly due to security concerns.
According to court documents, QTFY offers computer hacking services to its paying customers, including China’s Ministry of State Security and People\u2019s Liberation Army, which has one of the world’s most formidable hacking capabilities.
Michael Lebowitz, a former senior attorney in DOJ’s National Security Division, told USA TODAY the decision to publicize the alleged Chinese hacking scheme “looks to me like a ‘name-and-shame’ campaign where the U.S. essentially publicly calls out foreign hackers to let them know that we’re on to them.”
“The U.S. often takes similar tactics when indicting foreign hackers” because it’s unlikely those hackers would ever be brought to trial in the U.S., said Lebowitz, who is also a former senior legal adviser to U.S. Army Cyber Command.
QTFY’s computer hacking services work together, with QScan scanning and automatically infecting thousands of \u201cinternet-of-things\u201d (IoT) devices worldwide, the court documents allege. Those devices are then added to the QTRouter network of QTFY-controlled devices, with QTRouter also serving as an \u201cobfuscation network\u201d to conceal the Chinese government-linked origin of their computer intrusion activities.
The court-authorized seizures announced Aug. 26 made QScan and QTRouter inoperable, according to the court documents.\u00a0
\u201cChina’s hacking activities are so pervasive, and they’re able to operate at a scale that very few other countries around the world can match. And they’re very sophisticated,\u201d said Mieke Eoyang<\/a>, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy and now a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. \u201cBut the U.S. is also very sophisticated, and we’ve seen over the past five to 10 years a real increase in focus by the Department of Justice and FBI on being able to go after these types of cyberattacks.\u201d
Such Chinese attacks \u2212 and U.S. disruptions \u2212 have become a virtually routine cat-and-mouse game as Beijing has successfully penetrated U.S. critical infrastructure over the past decade, including financial institutions and power plants.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency<\/a>, or CISA, part of the Department of Homeland Security, has designated 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems and networks \u2212 whether physical or virtual \u2212 are considered so vital that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on U.S. physical and economic security, including national public health and safety.
Microsoft warned in May 2023<\/a> that it had uncovered \u201cstealthy and targeted malicious activity\u201d by a state-sponsored hacking group known as Volt Typhoon that was targeting U.S. critical infrastructure organizations.
That Volt Typhoon campaign, one of many sustained Chinese hacking efforts, focused on espionage and information gathering, Microsoft said, and was \u201cpursuing development of capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and the Asia region during future crises.\u201d
The new DOJ announcement is significant because it acknowledges China\u2019s use of cybercriminals to help camouflage its malicious activity on the internet, even as the Trump administration is enlisting the private sector to combat such activity, said Eoyang, who until January 2025 was the Pentagon\u2019s top civilian overseeing U.S. military offensive cyber operations.
\u201cWe’ve long known that China has this ecosystem that’s not just the government but involves the commercial side, too, of people selling services to their state security apparatus,\u201d Eoyang told USA TODAY. \u201cWhat’s interesting is that the Trump administration recently is taking steps to move in that direction by authorizing private U.S. companies to engage in this type of behavior.\u201d
President Donald Trump<\/a> signed a national security memorandum<\/a> on Aug. 12 titled \u201cExpanding Capabilities to Combat Transnational Cyber-Enabled Crime\u201d that authorizes vetted private U.S. companies to conduct offensive cyber operations against foreign criminal groups under federal supervision.
\u201cI think the jury’s still out on whether or not this is a good thing\u201d for the U.S. to do in response to pervasive hacking efforts by China, Russia, Iran and other government and nonstate entities, Eoyang said.
\u201cIt certainly makes it harder to call out China for this particular type of bad behavior when the U.S. authorizes it itself,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it’s also an admission that the volume of this type of activity happening on the internet is bigger than government’s ability to get after it itself.\u201d
Lebowitz said the Chinese government has been increasingly effective in sneaking malware and nefarious cyber tools into U.S. systems, especially since it has begun using “niche hacking services that add an extra layer of secrecy and obfuscation that makes detecting those threats so much harder.”
“It’s now a cat and mouse game to detect these threats before they can cause significant damage,” he said.
And while Washington is using a whole-of-government approach to detecting Beijing’s hacks, including forensic, intelligence and legal tools, the latest disruption, Lebowitz said, “is likely just the tip of the iceberg in terms of existing threats.”<\/p>\n

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WASHINGTON \u2212 U.S. officials said Aug. 26 that it \u200chas disrupted a Chinese hacking operation that it believes is responsible for cyber break-ins at the departments of Justice and Energy as well as NASA, the \u2060Federal Reserve, the Senate and other sensitive U.S. government agencies.In a statement, the Justice Department announced that it has seized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}