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FBI officials recently reached out to members of Congress to alert them to a cyber hack classified as a "major incident."
Fox News is told that China is the culprit and that the breach could pose a threat to national security. The hack involved FBI systems in the Virgin Islands, not FBI headquarters.
The FBI made this designation last week when notifying several members of Congress, Fox News is told.
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Bureau officials first informed members of Congress early last month that there was suspicious activity on an internal FBI system that contained law enforcement sensitive information. There is a 2014 law called The Federal Information Security Modernization Act, or FISMA. It "requires agencies to notify congress of major security incidents within seven days after there is a reasonable basis to conclude that a major incident has occurred."
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It's unclear exactly what information was compromised, but it was enough that the FBI had to notify Congress. Fox News has reached out to the FBI for comment.
China continues to be a thorn in the side of the U.S. intelligence community. Former FBI Director Chris Wray famously said that bureau agents opened a counterintelligence case involving China roughly every 12 hours. Under Director Kash Patel, the threat from China continues. The reported hack comes several months after Patel visited China to put pressure on leaders there to stop fentanyl ingredients from reaching South and Central America before entering the United States.
President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping next month in Beijing.
Politico first reported Wednesday that a recent China-linked cyber breach had been categorized last week as a "major incident" potentially impacting national security.
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The FBI first informed Congress on March 4 of suspicious activity on an internal server storing "law enforcement sensitive information" but did not publicly disclose the culprit, according to the outlet. Politico reported that China was suspected at the time. The bureau later decided the breach was a major incident under FISMA. Congress was notified of the major incident classification earlier this week, one aide told Politico.
Politico reported that in a March notice to Congress, the federal law enforcement agency informed lawmakers that hackers appeared to breach an FBI system by "leveraging a commercial Internet Service Provider's vendor infrastructure," which it characterized as reflective of the group's "sophisticated tactics."
The outlet reported that the notice indicated that the "affected" system included "returns from legal process, such as pen register and trap and trace surveillance returns, and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of FBI investigations."
