Simply Politics & News

[CC Writer]

I'm starting to question any news like this (not questioning you). I'd be willing to bet someone other than the Russians for a reason we may not find until a later date. If indeed they were hacked.

Russia suspected of hacking into US Treasury as part of 'huge cyber espionage campaign'

The breaches are believed to be connected to a broad campaign that also involved the recently disclosed hack on FireEye

Hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the US Treasury and Commerce departments, as part of "a huge cyber espionage campaign targeting the US government".

The hack is so serious it led to a National Security Council meeting at the White House on Saturday, one of the people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

US officials have not said much publicly beyond the Commerce Department confirming there was a breach at one of its agencies and that they asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to investigate.

National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot added that they "are taking all necessary steps to identify and remedy any possible issues related to this situation".

"This can turn into one of the most impactful espionage campaigns on record," said cybersecurity expert Dmitri Alperovitch.

The US government has not publicly identified who might be behind the hacking, but three of the people familiar with the investigation told Reuters that Russia was currently believed to be responsible for the attack. Two of the people said the breaches were connected to a broad campaign that also involved the recently disclosed hack on FireEye, a major US cybersecurity company with government and commercial contracts.

Britain signed a million dollar deal with cyber security firm FireEye just weeks before the company disclosed a major cyber attack by suspected Russian hackers.

In a statement posted to Facebook, the Russian foreign ministry described the allegations as another unfounded attempt by the US media to blame Russia for cyberattacks against US agencies.

Russian hacking incidents
The cyber spies are believed to have got in by surreptitiously tampering with updates released by IT company SolarWinds, which serves government customers across the executive branch, the military, and the intelligence services, according to two people familiar with the matter. The trick - often referred to as a "supply chain attack" - works by hiding malicious code in the body of legitimate software updates provided to targets by third parties.

In a statement released late on Sunday, the Austin, Texas-based company said updates to its monitoring software released between March and June of this year may have been subverted by what it described as a "highly-sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation state".

The company declined to offer any further detail, but the diversity of SolarWind's customer base has sparked concern within the US intelligence community that other government agencies may be at risk, according to four people briefed on the matter.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/13/foreign-backed-hackers-break-us-treasury/