Cyber Attacks On US Government - New Evidence

The wide ranging and successful cyber attacks on US government agencies and numerous private companies, including Microsoft, widely believed to have been undertaken by state-sponsored Russian hackers which was  first reported in December 2020, may in fact have begun much earlier. 

US investigators originally thought that the attacks on government agencies and private industry targets began in March or April 2020, including breaches of Treasury, State, Commerce and Energy Departments. The Treasury and Commerce departments were both confirmed as having been affected and others may have been breached. 

The hack, which may still be ongoing, appears to have begun as long ago as October 2019, when hackers first breached the Texas software company SolarWinds, which provides technology monitoring services to government agencies and 425 of the Fortune 500 companies. The hacking campaign entered US government and private systems by surreptitiously tampering  with and inserting malware into  updates released by SolarWinds. 

The attacks work by hiding malicious code in the body of legitimate software updates that are provided to the hacking targets by third parties. That malicious code gave the highly professional hackers remote access to an organization’s networks so they could steal information. State-backed Russian hackers were identified as the suspects, although Russia has firmly denied any involvement.

Microsoft said that the hackers were unable to get into emails or its products and services and that they were not able to modify the company's vital  source code which they were able to view, Microsoft did not say how long hackers were inside its networks and initially denied that it was breached in the attack.

Hackers gained entry into networks by getting more than 18,000 private and government users to download a tainted software update. Once inside, they were able to monitor internal emails at some of the top agencies in the US. “We still don’t have for the private sector, or for that matter the public sector, any mandatory reporting” on major hacking incidents, said senator Mark  Warner, Vice-Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee  said. “The amount of time it’s taking to assess the (latest) attack, it is taking longer than we would like to take,” he added. Warner also said the lack of US laws and policy to counter such major hacks is the product of a “lack of policy" that precedes the Trump administration. 

The massive data breach, revealed in the final weeks of Trump's administration is a dramatic finale for the Trump Presidency which has been accused of excessive deference to Russia and unsuccessful attempts to warm relations with President, Vladimir Putin. "There has been obviously a reluctance out of this White House to call out Russia repeatedly.... I don’t believe that is a problem of the intelligence community. I think that is a problem of the White House" Senator Warner told reporters.

​This large scale and sophisticated operation is perhaps the biggest known cyber attack against against US federal government networks in years. 

New York Times:      CNN:      Yahoo:        Guardian:          Reuters:

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