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The US government still does not know how deeply Russian hackers penetrated its networks during the worst cyberattack in history against federal agencies, members of Congress warned on Friday.
At least six government departments were breached in a likely Russian intelligence operation believed to have started in March. Although there is no evidence that classified networks have been compromised, it is not known what the hackers may have stolen or how long it will take to purge them.
Members of Congress said the administration is still struggling to understand the consequences as the details emerge. “This hack was so far-reaching that even our cybersecurity experts still don’t have a real sense in terms of the breadth of the intrusion itself,” said Stephen Lynch, head of the House reform and oversight committee, after attending a classified briefing.
Congressman Jamie Raskin, another committee member, added: “There is much more we don’t know than what we do know. I hope the government knows exactly how this was perpetrated on us and what the full extent of the damage is. “
US officials say they only recently learned of attacks on both the government and some Fortune 500 companies in which cyber spies roamed undetected for nine months. The department of energy and the national nuclear security administration, which manages the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal, was one of the agencies violated.
The hackers injected malicious code into software from SolarWinds, a company that provides network services, and appeared to use other tools to gain access. The US cybersecurity agency warned of a “serious risk” to the country’s infrastructure.
Tech giant Microsoft, which has helped respond to the breach, said it has identified more than 40 government agencies, think tanks, non-governmental organizations and IT companies infiltrated by hackers. Four out of five were in the United States, nearly half of them tech companies, with victims also in Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Microsoft said in a blog post: “This is not spying as usual, even in the digital age. Rather, it represents an act of recklessness that created serious technological vulnerability for the United States and the world. “
But Donald Trump, long reluctant to criticize his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, has been remarkably silent, instead focusing on overturning an election he lost. The president of the United States is under increasing pressure to speak out about what some have described as an epic national security crisis.
Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a former presidential candidate, told SiriusXM radio: “What I find most astonishing is that a cyberattack of this nature is really the modern equivalent of quasi-Russian bombers supposedly flying undetected across the country. “.
Describing the country’s cyber defenses as extraordinarily vulnerable and weak, Romney added: “In this scenario, not having the White House speaking out aggressively and protesting and taking punitive action is really very extraordinary.”
Trump’s absence on the issue means that it will be up to his successor, Joe Biden, to retaliate through sanctions, criminal charges or other means. In a statement Thursday, the president-elect said his administration “will make this gap a top priority from the moment we take office.”
However, the damage could take years to repair. Thomas Bossert, Trump’s former national security adviser, wrote this week in a New York Times column: “While the Russians did not have time to gain complete control of all the networks they hacked, they certainly did over hundreds of them. It will take years to know for sure which networks the Russians control and which they simply occupy.
“The logical conclusion is that we must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetrated. But it is not clear what the Russians intend to do next. The access that Russians now enjoy could be used for much more than just spying. “
