First there were reports of hackers messing with Barack Obama and John McCain’s computer systems this summer, during their presidential campaigns. Now, another team of cybercriminals made the news after senior U.S. officials confirmed for the Financial Times that the White House computer network had been compromised by Chinese hackers.

As it appears, the cybercriminals have not only managed to break through the system, but they’ve also managed to access some of the archives, before security experts were able to fix the breach.

Although establishing the identities of these attackers is pretty difficult, U.S. officials believe they may have been sponsored by the Chinese government, as they confessed to FT: “We are getting very targeted Chinese attacks so it stretches credulity that these are not directed by government-related organizations,” an official said.

Although there was no official comment from the White House, the attack was real. Fortunately, the cybercriminals were not able to break the more secure classified network. The only thing they gained access to was information and e-mail traffic from the unclassified computer network. The White House IT officials were reportedly forced to take down the network for repair for several days.

Such attacks are nothing new for the U.S. government. As Newsweek also reported recently, the attacks that targeted the Obama and McCain campaign systems this summer have also originated from China, or perhaps Russia.

The newspaper reported that what technology experts believed at first to be a computer virus, was in fact an attempt from cybercriminals to steal passwords and credit card numbers. “You have a problem way bigger than what you understand,” Obama’s team was informed at the time.

After the same thing happened to McCain’s computer network, investigators linked the attacks to a foreign entity interested in gathering information on the evolution of both campaigns, and therefore the future administration.