The U.S. federal weather network was breached by hackers from China, and U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has accused the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of "misleading the American public" to cover it up.

The breach forced cyber security teams to block data that is vital to disaster planning, aviation, shipping and numerous other vital uses, reports The Washington Post.

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Although the attack took place in late September, officials reportedly gave no indication that they had a problem until Oct. 20. Officials also said that the agency did not notify the proper authorities when it first found out about the attack.

Wolf, who heads a House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the NOAA's budget, criticized the NOAA for intentionally keeping quiet about the attack until reporters from The Washington Post began investigating the unscheduled maintenance.

"NOAA told me it was a hack and it was China, deliberately misleading the American public in its replies," said Wolf. "They had an obligation to tell the truth. They covered it up."

The NOAA operates a network of weather satellites and websites that distribute important information to public and private organizations. This includes forecasts for airlines and other modes of travel.

In October, the NOAA announced that it was performing "unscheduled maintenance" on its network, without explaining that a computer breach was the reason for it.

The NOAA released a statement earlier today acknowledging the attacking, saying that four of its websites were "compromised by an Internet-sourced attack," and that incident response began immediately."

This is not the first breach of NOAA data by Chinese hackers. Last month, the FBI arrested Xiafen "Sherry" Chen, an employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), for illegally downloading sensitive information from a database containing detailed information on the vulnerabilities of America's dams.

The FBI alleges that at various times during May 2012, Chen illegally accessed restricted areas of a protected U.S. Government computer database and downloaded "sensitive files" from the National Inventory of Dams.

According to the four-count indictment, Chen "intentionally exceeded authorized access" to the National Inventory of Dams database, and then "willfully and knowingly" stole sensitive and restricted data "involving critical national infrastructure."

The database is maintained and controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in conjunction with the National Dam Safety Review Board. It contains sensitive information on 8,100 major dams in the U.S. and their vulnerabilities. It also includes sensitive information on tens of thousands of smaller dams.

The database categorizes the dams by the number of people that could be killed in the event that a dam fails and collapses.

TagsChinese hack U.S. weather systems, Frank Wolf, Cover up, Cyber Security, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, Chinese hackers