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Russian government hackers are behind the breach in the US Treasury and Commerce departments, a report says.
Hackers have been able to monitor email traffic within departments for months, and it is unknown how many other federal agencies they may have compromised.
Now, the FBI is investigating the campaign of the hacking group working for the Russian foreign intelligence service, SVR, according to the Washington Post.
The hackers, known as Cozy Bear or APT29, are the same group that hacked the White House and the State Department under the Obama administration.
APT 29 has also reportedly tried to steal research on the Covid vaccine.
“The United States government is aware of these reports and we are taking all necessary steps to identify and remedy any potential problems related to this situation,” said National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot.
The hack is considered so significant that a meeting of the National Security Council was held at the White House on Saturday, according to Reuters.
US intelligence chiefs are reportedly concerned that hackers who broke into the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration have also broken into other government agencies.
“This is a much bigger story than a single agency,” an official told Reuters. “This is a huge cyber espionage campaign targeting the United States government and its interests.”
The news comes just weeks after Donald Trump fired Christopher Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Krebs had refuted many of Trump’s false claims about voter fraud and hacking of the voting system.
Hackers reportedly broke into NTIA’s email system, which uses Microsoft’s Office 365, and had been reading staff emails for months.
Microsoft has not commented.
“This is a nation state. We just don’t know which one yet, “said one person briefed with the hack.
The FBI, the cybersecurity division of the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. National Security Agency have yet to comment.
Reuters contributed to this report
