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.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
RSS