DoJ Corrects China Hacking Claim, Says U.S. Agencies Were Targets, Not Victims

The U.S. Department of Justice has updated a previous press release to clarify that major government bodies like the Federal Reserve and NASA were targeted by the Chinese state-sponsored group QTFY, rather than being confirmed victims of intrusion. The correction aims to align public statements with legal affidavits supporting recent domain seizures. This distinction implies that while QTFY scanned and attempted to breach numerous critical infrastructure sites using tools like QScan and QTRouter, successful compromises are unverified for all listed agencies. In one specific instance from 2019, QTFY allegedly leveraged CVE-2019-11510 in Pulse Secure VPN to attempt access to NASA systems.