Determine how the hackers gained access to this incident The Chinese hackers who breached senior US officials emails were able to do so by first stealing sensitive data from a Microsoft engineer, Multiple mishaps, including the crash of an internal Microsoft system in April $2021$ and the hack of the engineer, gave the Chinese hackers coveted access to a cryptographic key that was later used to break into the US officials email accounts.The hackers breached the email accounts of the US Ambassador to China in advance of Raimondos trip to China.Microsoft has been under scrutiny from US lawmakers and officials who have demanded more information on how the alleged Chinese hackers broke into the email accounts.Microsoft said that it had corrected the technical issues that allowed the hackers to obtain the cryptographic key from its internal system. As CNN previously reported, the Biden administration believes the Chinese hacking gave Beijing insights about US thinking.Though the State Department confronted the Chinese government about the hack, a senior National Security Agency official, Rob Joyce, has described the activity as standard espionage. Thats what nation$-$states do$,$ Joyce said in July. We have to defend against it$,$ we need to push back against it$.$ But that is something that happens.