Nebraska congressman says emails hacked by Chinese Communist Party

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Rep. Don Bacon says the FBI notified him that a portion of his personal and campaign emails were hacked by the Communist Party of China for about a month.

Congressman Bacon posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, about the development on Monday afternoon, noting that the Chinese Communist Party hackers had access to emails between May 15 and June 16.

“The CCP hackers utilized a vulnerability in the Microsoft software,” he said in a tweet.

Thus, there were other victims in this cyber operation. The Communist government in China are not our friends and are very active in conducting cyber espionage. I’ll work overtime to ensure Taiwan gets every $ of the $19B in weapons backlog they’ve ordered, and more. (2/2)
— Rep. Don Bacon 🇺🇸 (@RepDonBacon) August 14, 2023

Bacon, who represents Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional district, said in subsequent tweets that he was a CCP target because of his stances on Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong. He also linked the incident to reports of a similar incident last month within the U.S. State Department.

Plain and simple, the Chinese Communist Party is a bully. I will not back down. I will always stand up for freedom and human rights around the world.
— Rep. Don Bacon 🇺🇸 (@RepDonBacon) August 15, 2023

On July 12, The Associated Press reported that state-backed Chinese hackers had foiled Microsoft’s cloud-based security, hacking email accounts of officials at multiple U.S. agencies that deal with China ahead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing in June. Calling it a surgical and targeted act of espionage, U.S. officials said in July that none of the breached systems were classified, nor was any of the stolen data.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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