State will address OPM hack with Chinese officials

State Department officials will directly discuss the recent massive hack of the federal government with Chinese officials during a three-day summit in Washington this week, according to a senior agency official.

Federal investigators have privately accused China of breaking into computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), exposing the information of up to 18 million people to hackers.

{mosads}“Some of the revelations are fairly recent, and those will certainly be talked about in very direct terms,” said a senior State Department official during a conference call with reporters, referring to the OPM hack.

Roughly 400 Chinese officials arrived Monday in Washington for the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue at an awkward time for the U.S.-China relationship. Details continue to leak about the breadth of the breach, thought to be the worst digital theft of government data ever.

The U.S. has not publicly blamed Beijing for the digital break-in, leaving many unsure whether the topic would be specifically raised during this week’s meetings.

“I think what you’ll see is that in sort of working through these issues and making sure we have clear communication with the Chinese on our concerns about cybersecurity, we’re able to raise [the OPM hack] both with officials in the security side of the Chinese government, but also with officials in the economic side of the Chinese government,” the official said.

“They don’t always necessarily look at questions from the same perspective, and we want to make sure that we’re getting through to both of those sides,” the official added.

China has said the U.S. is jumping to conclusions by blaming Beijing for orchestrating the digital assault.

Treasury Department officials will also play a large role in this week’s meetings.

President Obama signed an executive order in April giving the Treasury more power to levy sanctions on foreign powers behind individual cyberattacks.

Some have pushed for the government revenue agency to use the talks to threaten China with sanctions in response to the OPM hack.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is running for president, urged Treasury officials on Monday to convey that “as additional evidence comes to light, the U.S. will consider imposing sanctions against any Chinese government agencies or commercial enterprise found to have been involved in the recent cyberattack.”

The State Department did not say whether sanctions would be part of the three-day discussions. Most outside experts see it as unlikely.

In fact, many are hesitant to predict that sanctions will be levied at all. The two countries have a strong economic interest in remaining at the table on cybersecurity.

“It’s a very wide-ranging — obviously — topic,” the State official said. “It’s a fast-changing area, and it’s an ongoing topic of discussion. We’re the two biggest users of the Internet. We both have huge global sort of interests in seeing the Internet be secured.”

The U.S. and China have not had a formal cybersecurity working group since the Justice Department indicted five members of the Chinese military for hacking, prompting Beijing to withdraw.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters Tuesday that it was up to Washington to reestablish the official talks, Reuters reported.

“China and the United States had previously always had a good dialogue mechanism on issues of Internet security,” he said. “Because of reasons that everyone knows about, and not because of China, this dialogue has stopped.”

“Speaking by seeking truth from the facts, resuming these talks probably needs the United States to properly handle the relevant issue to create conditions for dialogue,” Lu added.

Updated 9:48 a.m.