U.S. officials believe that Chinese hackers are behind a massive data breach that has compromised up to 4 million current and former federal workers.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Associated Press that investigators suspect the cyberattack was carried out by the Chinese. She said the breach was “yet another indication of a foreign power probing successfully and focusing on what appears to be data that would identify people with security clearances.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. is denying the accusations.

“Cyber attack is a global threat which could [sic] only be addressed by international cooperation based on mutual trust and mutual respect,” Zhu Haiquan said in a statement late Thursday. “We hope all countries in the world can work constructively together to address cyber security issues, push forward the formulation of international rules and norms in … cyberspace, in order to build a peaceful, secure, open and cooperative cyberspace.”

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement yesterday confirming the Office of Personnel Management and Interior Department had been hacked. “DHS is continuing to monitor federal networks for any suspicious activity and is working aggressively with the affected agencies to conduct investigative analysis to assess the extent of this alleged intrusion,” the statement said.

DHS said its intrusion detection system, known as EINSTEIN, which screens federal Internet traffic to identify potential cyber threats, identified the hack of OPM’s systems and the Interior Department’s data center, which is shared by other federal agencies.

Sources have told Fox News that names, addresses and social security information of were compromised, “and that the breach involved an ‘advanced persistent threat’ designed to harvest information covertly without crippling systems.”

The original report of the hack said that potentially every government agency was affected. It was unclear whether data relating to intelligence agents was included in the compromise.

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