Though the U.S. government has not confirmed who is behind the
data breach that affected 4 million government employees, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul said evidence points to the Chinese government.
"In my judgment this was an attack by China against the United States government," McCaul said Sunday on
"Face the Nation." "It quantifies to espionage, and that raises all sorts of issues that we need to deal with."
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The breach appears to be sponsored by the government of China because it did not target credit card information, which would suggest criminal hackers, but was done to get to the personal information on political appointees and other federal employees to exploit them "so that that later down road they can use those for espionage to either recruit spies or compromise individuals in the federal government," McCaul said.
"I think this is an area where there are no rules of the game in terms of espionage," he added.
China is also suspected in the
Anthem healthcare hack earlier this year. Officials believe the purpose of that hack, too, was to get sensitive information of federal employees who have classified knowledge.
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