The US investigates the alleged hacking of the email of its ambassador to China

The United States has confirmed this Thursday that it is investigating the alleged hacking of the email of its ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, by hackers linked to the Beijing government.

The media The Wall Street Journal and CNN have reported that Chinese hackers have accessed Burns' email and that of the Undersecretary of the State Department for East Asia, Daniel Kritenbrink, in an attack that would have affected hundreds of Executive accounts.

“We have an investigation underway and we cannot offer more details at the moment,” a State Department spokesman told EFE on condition of anonymity.

The same source described the events as a “cybersecurity incident” and assured that the State Department “constantly monitors and responds” to this type of attack.

According to the local press, the hackers did not have access to classified documents, but they did have access to Burns' and Kritenbrink's email inboxes.

That would have allowed them to obtain information about the planning of recent trips to China by senior officials in the Joe Biden Administration, such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken or Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

According to the same information, the pirates did not access Blinken's mail.

Both Burns and Kritenbrink accompanied the Secretary of State in the meetings he held with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Chinese authorities on his trip to Beijing last June.

Blinken traveled to China to reduce tension

After months of tensions due to the Taiwan crisis, the Ukraine war and trade disputes, Blinken traveled to China with the aim of establishing permanent communication channels that avoid a direct conflict between the two powers.

The dialogue continued last week in Indonesia, where the state secretary met with the head of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Foreign Affairs Commission, Wang Yi.

Yellen and US Climate Envoy John Kerry have also been to Beijing recently.