US government was hacked

LovetoLive

Tue, Dec 15 2020, 6:40 pm

This is a big deal. It’s unbelievable. Was there another thread started already about this?
gmail has also not been working on and off yesterday and today. Do you think they were also hacked ?

Quote:

Russian government hackers are believed to be responsible for infiltrating computer systems at multiple U.S. agencies in recent months, including the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of the Treasury, according to government agencies and media reports. Russia has denied the accusations.

The hack hinged on a vulnerability on a software monitoring product from SolarWinds, a company based in Austin, Texas. The company works widely with the federal government and hundreds of large U.S. companies. Many use SolarWinds' Orion software to monitor their computer networks.

SolarWinds has some 300,000 customers but says "fewer than 18,000" installed the version of its Orion products earlier this year that now appears to have been compromised.

So far, the list of affected U.S. government entities includes the Commerce Department, Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon, the Treasury Department, the U.S. Postal Service and the National Institutes of Health.

The incident is the latest in what has become a long list of suspected Russian electronic incursions into other nations – particularly the U.S. – under President Vladimir Putin. Multiple countries say Russia was previously found to have used hackers, bots and other means in attempts to influence elections in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Many U.S. national security agencies made major efforts to prevent Russia from interfering in this year's election. But those same agencies seem to have been blindsided by news that hackers — suspected to be Russia's foreign intelligence service, the SVR — were digging around inside U.S. government systems, possibly since the spring.

"It's as if you wake up one morning and suddenly realize that a burglar has been going in and out of your house for the last six months," said Glenn Gerstell, who was the National Security Agency's general counsel from 2015 to 2020.

Describing some of the detective work that's now taking place, he added, "You'd have to go back and look at every room to see what was taken, what might have been touched. And of course, that's just a horrifying thought."

The intruders were careful to cover their tracks, Gerstell said.

"You couldn't tell that they came in, you couldn't tell that they left the back door open. You couldn't even tell necessarily when they came in, took a look around and when they left."

To carry out the attack, hackers exploited the supply chain that SolarWinds uses to distribute software updates. The company said it has proof that when it sent updates to customers between March and June, the updates to the Orion products also included malware that gave hackers access.

Microsoft has now taken control of the domain name that hackers used to communicate with systems that were compromised by the Orion update, according to security expert Brian Krebs. The company's analysis, he added, should help reveal the scope of the affected companies and agencies.

So far, some U.S. government departments and agencies have acknowledged they are investigating the breaches but have provided few details. The White House has been silent about the suspected Russian hack.

"This SolarWinds hack is very problematic, very troublesome, because it's not at all clear exactly how we should respond," Gerstell said. Part of the problem, he added, is that it's not clear what the hackers did after gaining access.

"This is not a question of someone manipulating software to open dams or turn off electric grids," Gerstell said. "It's not even clear that this is necessarily an attack designed to steal intellectual property the way China, for example, has stolen everything from patents for solar panels to the blueprints for fighter jets."

The intrusion could simply be a case of espionage, he said, of one government trying to understand what its adversary is doing.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15.....nment