China’s Cyberattacks on Federal Agencies

The story so far

As of August 26, 2026

Chinese government backed hackers broke into multiple pillars of the U.S. government, including the Federal Reserve, NASA, the Justice Department and the Senate. The Justice Department has taken control of internet addresses that ran two hacker services, QScan and QTRouter, that were used to reach U.S. critical systems and other sensitive networks. Targets also included the Energy Department, parts of the U.S. military and hospitals.

This is a campaign built on shared infrastructure rather than a one off breach. The attackers used common services to scout targets, route traffic through layers of proxies and test pathways before striking. That service layer, described by researchers as a kind of quartermaster for espionage, helps explain how many different agencies were hit with consistency and speed, and why the same platforms kept showing up across intrusions.

What is at stake now is the integrity of the government’s most sensitive data and the systems that run core services. At risk are monetary policy deliberations at the Fed, active law enforcement files at Justice, space and research work at NASA and internal legislative material. The platforms were used to aim at critical infrastructure, meaning services like power, transportation and finance, raising the risk that intrusions were positioned not only to steal information but also to prepare for future leverage. The hackers also used a Chinese tech company to hide their tracks, which complicates efforts to trace and block them.

The U.S. has moved to disrupt the attackers’ cover by seizing the internet infrastructure that supported their tools, but seizing front end domains does not remove access the hackers may already have inside victim networks. The work now is to find and evict any lingering access, close the pathways those shared services enabled and test whether the takedown actually reduces repeat intrusions. An earlier White House declassification framed the threat around alleged access to voter data, but the current case centers on a broader espionage operation aimed at the government’s operational core.