Treasury levels sanctions tied to a massive hack of telecom companies and breach of its own network

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The sanctions are aimed at a Chinese hacker who, according to officials, works with Beijing's Ministry of State Security, and was involved in a cyber-attack unveiled last month that allowed hackers to access an unspecified number of workstations at the Treasury Department.

it allowed Beijing to gain access to private text messages and phone conversations of an unknown number of American citizens.

The United States believes that high-ranking U.S. government officials and influential political figures have had their communications compromised.

The U.S. Treasury Department will continue to hold accountable any malicious hackers who target Americans, American businesses, or the U.S. government, including those who have targeted the Treasury Department directly," said the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Adewale Adeyemo.

The sanctions result in neither the suspected hacker, Yin Kecheng, who is from Shanghai, nor the company, Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology Co. LTD, being able to conduct business with U.S. companies.

for its alleged role in multiple hacking incidents targeting critical U.S. infrastructure.

The Chinese government has repeatedly refused U.S. accusations of hacking, specifically disputing the Treasury Department hacking allegations made last month.

Last Friday's sanctions announcement did not give new information about the extent of the hack into the Treasury Department, which the agency said it found out about on December 8. That is when a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, signaled that hackers had stolen a crucial "key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service that allows remote technical support to be provided to workers."

The key allowed hackers to bypass the service's security and gain remote control over a number of employee computers.