Dozens of e-mail accounts at the US Department of the Treasury were compromised in a massive breach of government agencies being blamed on Russia, with hackers breaking into systems used by the department’s highest-ranking officials, a US senator said on Monday after being briefed on the matter.
US Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, provided new details of the hack following a briefing to US Senate Finance Committee staff by the Internal Revenue Service and the department.
Wyden said that though there is no indication that taxpayer data was compromised, the hack “appears to be significant,” including through the compromise of dozens of e-mail accounts and access to the departmental offices division of the US Department of the Treasury, which the senator said was home to its highest-ranking officials.
Photo: AFP
In addition, the breach appears to involve the theft of encryption keys from US government servers, Wyden said.
“Treasury still does not know all of the actions taken by hackers, or precisely what information was stolen,” Wyden said in a statement.
It is also not clear what Russian hackers intend to do with any e-mails they might have accessed.
A department spokeswoman declined to comment on Wyden’s statement.
The department was among the earliest known agencies reported to have been affected in a breach that now encompasses a broad spectrum of departments. The effects and consequences of the hack were still being assessed, although the US Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm said last week in a statement that the intrusion posed a “grave” risk to government and private networks.
In the Treasury’s case, Wyden said, the breach began in July, but experts believe the overall hacking operation began months earlier when malicious code was slipped into updates to popular software that monitors computer networks.
The malware, affecting a product made by US company SolarWinds, gave the hackers remote access into an organization’s networks so they could steal information. It was not discovered until cybersecurity company FireEye determined it had been hacked.
Microsoft, which has helped respond to the breach, revealed last week that it had identified more than 40 government agencies, non-governmental organizations, think tanks and information technology companies infiltrated by the hackers.
US President Donald Trump sought to downplay the severity of the hack last week, writing on Twitter without any evidence that perhaps China was responsible.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr have stated publicly that they believe Russia was to blame, the consensus of others in the US government and of the cybersecurity community.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS