According to NBC News and Reuters, the United States Secret Service confirmed that hackers from APT41, a criminal cyber-hacking group linked to the Chinese Communist Party, stole “at least $20 million in U.S. Covid Relief benefits, including Small Business Administration loans and unemployment insurance funds in over a dozen states.”
According to the report, Chinese hackers were also behind other large data breaches that provided access to millions of Americans’ personal information to be “used by China for espionage purposes.” In addition, testimony before Congress has included that “every adult American has had all or most of their personal data stolen by the Chinese government.”
The Secret Service is diligently working to recapture the funds and has stated that it has “recovered about half of the stolen $20 million in the APT41 case.”