How Russian spies hacked the Justice, State, Treasury, Energy and Commerce Departments: CBS News

[Stuart G]

Last edited Wed Feb 24, 2021, 01:15 AM - Edit history (1)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/solarwinds-hack-russia-cyberattack-60-minutes-2021-02-14/
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President Biden inherited a lot of intractable problems, but perhaps none is as disruptive as the cyber war between the United States and Russia simmering largely under the radar. Last March, with the coronavirus spreading uncontrollably across the United States, Russian cyber soldiers released their own contagion by sabotaging a tiny piece of computer code buried in a popular piece of software called "SolarWinds." The hidden virus spread to 18,000 government and private computer networks by way of one of those software updates we all take for granted. The attack was unprecedented in audacity and scope. Russian spies went rummaging through the digital files of the U.S. departments of Justice, State, Treasury, Energy, and Commerce and for nine months had unfettered access to top-level communications, court documents, even nuclear secrets. And by all accounts, it's still going on.

Brad Smith: I think from a software engineering perspective, it's probably fair to say that this is the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.

Brad Smith is president of Microsoft. He learned about the hack after the presidential election this past November. By that time, the stealthy intruders had spread throughout the tech giants' computer network and stolen some of its proprietary source code used to build its software products. More alarming: how the hackers got in… piggy-backing on a piece of third party software used to connect, manage and monitor computer networks.

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The last 4 words in the last sentence in paragraph 1 above are very frightening:"It's still going on.

The second paragraph is also very frightening...................:
Brad Smith: I think from a software engineering perspective, it's probably fair to say that this is the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.


Also think about these 2 sentences, beginning of paragraph 3:........Brad Smith is president of Microsoft. He learned about the hack after the presidential election this past November.....Well the president of
Microsoft didn't find out about this until November 2020, while the attack started in December of 2019..

[UpInArms]

1. This is very bad

Very very very ... bad

[Stuart G]

2. Note that we heard little about this from former President Trump.

We did not know it was the largest attack in cyber history as stated in above article...We did not
know who did it, and we did not know when it started...Dec 1919 and when it ended, Dec 2020

[UpInArms]

4. We knew that trump's administration was inept incompetent and

Careless, as well as completely off the rails ....

I am certain that we will find out so much more ... it is my belief that they truly were hellbent on destroying this country.

[AZ8theist]

5. Well beyond incompetence...

Doturd was a compromised Russian asset.

A TRAITOR to the United States. He needs to be tried as such.

[Cha]

3. We Need more Brilliant Computer

Geniuses than Putin.. the Traitor's Puppet master.

[monkeyman1]

6. remember

remember trump put rudy G. in charge of cyber security in 2017 . isn't that a hoot . he can't stay sober that long.

[FormerOstrich]

7. Thank you, Stuart G

Your emphasis are spot on! I have one of my own:

software updates we all take for granted.

I don't want to take them for granted. We should never have had to take them for granted. The bottom line is our devices are constantly loading software updates, communicating through the internet backbone, and intrinsically integrated with cloud services, and running services on the device. We can no longer, as end users, really know what software we are running and what it is doing.

It makes me furious. Microsoft led the charge. DU probably knew about the hack before Brad Smith...or it wouldn't surprise me.

I consider it all a foundation of sand. It is not surprising we have ended up where we are. A lot of people made a ton of money. They sucked out the money instead of investing in security.

Ok...taking deep breath now...

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. Why does any business or gov't rely on the world's most incompetent software maker, anyway?

[struggle4progress]

9. Trump let Putin win cyber-security war

BY MAYA KOSOFF
JULY 16, 2018

As the White House trained its attention on the spectacle surrounding the meeting of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, the Trump administration was largely ignoring a more potent danger back home. The Trump-Putin summit, after all, is mostly a media event—an opportunity for Trump to size up his adversary and, in the court of public opinion, try to convert him to a friend. Back in Washington, however, the bureaucrats, analysts, and officials responsible for resisting Russia’s clandestine actions are facing another threat: neglect. For the past 18 months, the Trump administration has been at war with itself over Russia—or, perhaps more accurately, at war with its Russophile president.

... the result has been a disorganized and often underfunded effort to counter Russian disinformation and other active measures, such as election hacking. The White House’s election-meddling task force, for instance, recently lost the 18-year F.B.I. veteran who was leading it, leaving some to question whether the group has the focus or support needed to carry out its mission ... Instead of being pre-emptive .. the response from the White House to Russian election-meddling attempts had been indifferent, leaving the F.B.I. to be “reactive” in its responses to threats.

Those threats are more pressing now than ever, according to Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence. On .. the same day that 12 Russian nationals were indicted for alleged crimes related to the hacking and release of Democratic e-mails in the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Coats said the indictments were a warning that the Kremlin still poses a threat to the United States’ cyber-security. “The warning lights are blinking red again,” Coats said. “Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack” ... Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president for customer security and trust, said said his team had discovered a spear-phishing campaign launched by the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence agency, and targeting three candidates running in the 2018 midterm elections. Burt declined to name the candidates, but said “They were all people who, because of their positions, might have been interesting targets from an espionage standpoint, as well as an election disruption standpoint.” At the same security forum, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that the Justice Department will notify the public, private organizations, and American companies if and when foreign interference occurs. “The Department of Justice investigates and prosecutes malign foreign influence activity that violates federal criminal law,” he said. “Some critics argue against prosecuting people who live in foreign nations that are unlikely to extradite their citizens. That is a shortsighted view.”

Despite the overwhelming proof, Trump reportedly chafes at the mention of Russian election meddling. After meeting with Putin last year, Trump told reporters, “You can only ask so many times. He said he didn’t meddle . . . every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it” ...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/how-trump-let-putin-win-the-cyber-security-war