On April 20, 2021, it was reported that suspected Chinese-state backed hacker groups had breached multiple government agencies, defense companies and financial institutions in both the US and Europe after the hackers created and used a Zero-day exploit for Ivanti Pulse Connect Secure VPN devices. A Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency alert reported that the attacks using the exploited started in June 2020 or earlier. The attacks are believed to be the third major data breach against the U.S. in the past year behind the 2020 United States federal government data breach and the 2021 Microsoft Exchange Server data breach.