Russia Hacks Everything By Chris Knight
Just when you thought it could not get worse, it has been revealed that Russia has hacked US nuclear secrets and much else. It just shows how dopey the US has become. But at least there will be an end to hacking under Beijing Biden, where an open borders view of nuclear information will be given, so that everybody can destroy the United States.
“A massive suspected Russian cyber campaign is being called the biggest breach in American history and a 'grave threat' to the government and private companies, with the Senate's No. 2 Democrat demanding a 'response in kind.'
The sprawling attack, which targeted critical government infrastructure using a Trojan horse hidden in network management software from SolarWinds Corp, also compromised broad swathes of the private sector, including Microsoft and likely most of the Fortune 500, it emerged on Thursday.
Officials say the attack went undetected for nearly nine months, allowing the hackers free range in the affected networks, including at the Pentagon, FBI, Treasury, State Department and nuclear security agencies, and that the true scale of the stolen information may never be known.
'There will be a price to pay for this,' vowed Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, in a floor speech on Thursday. 'This is nothing short of a virtual invasion by the Russians into critical accounts of the federal government.'
'When adversaries such as Russia torment us, tempt us, breach the security of our nation, we need to respond in kind,' said Durbin, though noting he was not calling for 'all-out war'.
President-elect Joe Biden also vowed a tough response, saying in a statement: 'Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation.'
Biden vowed to 'disrupt and deter' future cyber attacks by 'imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners.'
The White House has not yet commented on the breach. The attack, if authorities can prove it was carried out by Russia as experts believe, creates a fresh foreign policy problem for President Donald Trump in his final days in office.
Officially, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has not publicly identified Russia as the source of the attack, and Russia denies involvement. But private security companies say that all signs point to the Kremlin.
Asked whether Russia was behind the attack, a U.S. official said: 'We believe so. We haven't said that publicly yet because it isn't 100 percent confirmed.'
CISA warned the sophisticated attack was hard to detect and will be difficult to undo. 'This threat actor has demonstrated sophistication and complex tradecraft in these intrusions,' the agency said in a flash bulletin.
The agency said that the intrusion posed a 'grave risk' to 'critical infrastructure' in both the public and private sector, and at all levels of government.
In a statement to DailyMail.com on Thursday, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the company had detected and removed malicious code from the SolarWinds attack within the company, but denied that any of its products were affected.
Microsoft is one of the world's largest technology companies, with clients across the public and private sector, and last year was awarded the $10 billion JEDI contract to run the Department of Defense's cloud computing system.
'We have not found evidence of access to production services or customer data. Our investigations, which are ongoing, have found absolutely no indications that our systems were used to attack others,' the spokesperson said.
As well, the two agencies responsible for maintaining America's nuclear weapons stockpile have evidence they were compromised in the attack, which also breached the Pentagon, FBI, Treasury and State Department.
'This is looking like it's the worst hacking case in the history of America,' one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. 'They got into everything.'
If the hacker was China, we would not even hear about it, as it would be business as usual.
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