Monday, December 14, 2020

U.S. Treasury Computers Hacked By Foreign Government

U.S. Treasury building

 A sophisticated hacking group backed by a foreign government stole information from the U.S. Treasury Department and a U.S. agency responsible for deciding policy around the internet and telecommunications, reports Reuters.

A follow-up report from the Washington Post claims that it was Russian government hackers that breached the Treasury and Commerce departments, along with other U.S. government agencies. (There has been no independent corroboration of Russia as the source of the hacks.)

Officials were scrambling over the weekend to assess the extent of the intrusions and implement effective countermeasures, but initial signs suggested the breach was long-running and significant, the Post adds.

All of the organizations were breached through the update server of a network management system called SolarWinds, according to the Bezos rag.

The SolarWinds said Sunday in a statement that monitoring products it released in March and June of this year may have been surreptitiously weaponized with in a “highly-sophisticated, targeted . . . attack by a nation state.”

"This is looking very, very bad,” one person told the Post.

SolarWinds products are used by all five branches of the U.S. military, the Pentagon, State Department, Justice Department, NASA, the Executive Office of the President and the National Security Agency, according to the firm’s website.

The matter is so serious that it prompted an emergency National Security Council meeting on Saturday, Reuters reports.

Further details on the hack at Treasury are not available.

Return to this post for updates.

-RW

2 comments:

  1. WOW!!! They met on SATURDAY!?!?!?!??!?
    Must be super serious.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hope they didn't clean out the SS Trust Fund.

    ReplyDelete