The Justice Department rewrote its own hacking announcement two days later

This article was published on August 31, 2026 Victims became targets, and the department added a line explaining that the original had overstated its own affidavit. The US Justice Department has quietly rewritten a press release that said Chinese hackers had claimed victims across the Senate, the Federal Reserve, NASA and half a dozen other federal bodies. The revised version says those organisations were targets, and that only some were actually compromised, as Reuters reported. The original text went out on 26 August alongside a set of domain seizures. It listed the Senate, the Federal Reserve, NASA, the Department of Energy, the Justice Department itself, Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, defence contractors, financial institutions and universities as having been among the hackers’ victims. Two days later that word was gone. The agencies became “among the targets” of QTFY, the Chinese state-sponsored group named in the case, and the department added a line explaining itself. “Edits have been made to ensure this press release accurately reflects the government’s allegations in the affidavit in support of the domain seizures,” the amended release said.