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Donald Trump has tried to downplay what one of his top officials described as a “significant” cyberattack, allegedly carried out by Russia, on several top-secret US government agencies.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had pointed the finger at Moscow for the attack, but the president claims the incident has been hyped in the media.
He also used his response to the attack to try again to discredit the outcome of the November presidential election, prompting Twitter to flag the posts with a disclaimer that said Joe Biden’s victory had been certified by officials.
Trump tweeted: “The Cyber Hack is much bigger in the fake news media than it is today. I have been fully informed and everything is well under control.
“Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority song when something happens because Lamestream is, mainly for financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it could be China (it could be!).
“There could also have been a hit to our ridiculous voting machines during the elections, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupt embarrassment to America.”
Pompeo had accused the Kremlin during a radio interview.
“I think it is true that now we can say quite clearly that it was the Russians who participated in this activity,” Mark Levin told the radio show.
It was the first time that a member of the Trump administration had pointed the finger at Moscow in public for what security officials have said is a “significant and ongoing” hacking campaign.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Russia for the attack
US media reports have said that Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, is believed to be behind the attack.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement.
UK officials are also struggling to find out if any UK government networks have been compromised.
A security source said the only known British victims so far are a small number of non-public sector organizations.
But these are the early days of the investigation. The hackers used tools that had not been seen before, making it very difficult for investigators to identify breaches.
Cybersecurity experts in the United States were the first to raise the alarm about the hacking campaign last week.
Paul Chichester, director of operations for the UK’s National Center for Cyber Security (NCSC), which is part of the spy agency GCHQ, urged companies to take “immediate action” to protect their networks.
“This is a complex global cyber incident, and we are working with international partners to fully understand its scale and any impact on the UK,” he said in a statement.
Donald Trump has been silent about it until now
“The NCSC is working to mitigate any potential risks, and practical guidance has been posted on our website.”
The comments came as officials in the US, UK and around the world struggled to understand the enormity of the attack, which appears to be unprecedented in terms of its penetration into the US security apparatus.
“This could be the most shocking national security breach, a cyber breach, that we have ever seen,” said John Hultquist, senior director of analytics at Mandiant Threat Intelligence.
Mandiant is part of cybersecurity company FireEye, which was the first to discover the breach when it discovered that its systems had been compromised.
After raising the alarm, it emerged that various departments of the US government, including the departments of defense, state, treasury and even the nuclear agency, had also been breached.
A spokeswoman has said that there is no threat to the US nuclear weapons arsenal.
“They clearly managed to get access to a lot of safe areas. It’s going to be very difficult to get out,” Hultquist told Sky News.
What appears to have been a highly sophisticated team of hackers used various ways to compromise the public and private sector computer networks.
President-elect Joe Biden has spoken out on piracy
One was through software called Orion created by technology firm SolarWinds.
Malicious code was inserted into an update of this software, used by thousands of customers. Once the update was installed, the hackers gained access to a large number of networks, including those of the US government and Microsoft.
But just updating the infected software does not mean that the system has been compromised.
With such a large list of potential targets, it appears that the hackers carefully selected the companies and government agencies they wanted to exploit.
They could do this by stealing secrets, exchanging important data, or just sitting on spy systems. As it stands, the scale of the damage or possible theft is not yet known.
Ciaran Martin is the founder and former director of the NCSC and now works as a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.
“It is one of the most significant cyber attacks that has ever been seen,” he told Sky News.
“But from what we know, at this point, it seems to be [for] traditional espionage, obtaining information from governments and companies, instead of altering data, destroying data, manipulating things, etc., but it remains to be seen what the final image tells us. “
Joe biden he has said that dealing with the violation will be a “top priority” for his administration from the moment he takes office.
Mr. Hultquist said that whoever carried out the hack was a very sophisticated operator.
“They are among the most advanced that we have seen, if not the most,” he said.
“They are very adept at forensics to stay under the radar.”
This means that hackers were careful to hide their trail every time they penetrated a network, making it difficult, if not impossible, to know where they had gone and what they had seen.
“The proof [of their capability] it’s in the pudding, “Hultquist said.
“Just look at how many high-value targets they were able to silently compromise. It’s pretty much all the evidence you need on how capable they are.”
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