The US Justice Department has disrupted a large-scale, state-sponsored Chinese hacking operation that breached the networks of numerous top federal agencies, including the Senate and the DOJ's own systems. Officials said the campaign, run by a group known as QTFY, had targeted American critical infrastructure and sensitive government networks since at least 2018, highlighting the persistent and increasingly sophisticated nature of state-backed cyber espionage against the US.

Prosecutors seized two domains, dubbed "QScan" and "QTRouter", used by the hackers to infect thousands of internet-connected devices and route attacks through them to disguise their origin in China. Victims reportedly included the Federal Reserve, NASA, the Department of Energy, Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and four companies in the US and South Korea, alongside hospitals, telecoms firms, power companies and defence contractors. The affidavit named China's Ministry of State Security and People's Liberation Army as paying customers of the hacking tools. The disruption was announced by Attorney General Todd Blanche and the FBI ahead of a planned September meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping in Washington.