Dozens of e-mail accounts at the US Department of the Treasury were compromised in a massive breach of government agencies being blamed on Russia, with hackers breaking into systems used by the department’s highest-ranking officials, a US senator said on Monday after being briefed on the matter.
US Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, provided new details of the hack following a briefing to US Senate Finance Committee staff by the Internal Revenue Service and the department.
Wyden said that though there is no indication that taxpayer data was compromised, the hack “appears to be significant,” including through the compromise of dozens of e-mail accounts and access to the departmental offices division of the US Department of the Treasury, which the senator said was home to its highest-ranking officials.
Photo: AFP
In addition, the breach appears to involve the theft of encryption keys from US government servers, Wyden said.
“Treasury still does not know all of the actions taken by hackers, or precisely what information was stolen,” Wyden said in a statement.
It is also not clear what Russian hackers intend to do with any e-mails they might have accessed.
A department spokeswoman declined to comment on Wyden’s statement.
The department was among the earliest known agencies reported to have been affected in a breach that now encompasses a broad spectrum of departments. The effects and consequences of the hack were still being assessed, although the US Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm said last week in a statement that the intrusion posed a “grave” risk to government and private networks.
In the Treasury’s case, Wyden said, the breach began in July, but experts believe the overall hacking operation began months earlier when malicious code was slipped into updates to popular software that monitors computer networks.
The malware, affecting a product made by US company SolarWinds, gave the hackers remote access into an organization’s networks so they could steal information. It was not discovered until cybersecurity company FireEye determined it had been hacked.
Microsoft, which has helped respond to the breach, revealed last week that it had identified more than 40 government agencies, non-governmental organizations, think tanks and information technology companies infiltrated by the hackers.
US President Donald Trump sought to downplay the severity of the hack last week, writing on Twitter without any evidence that perhaps China was responsible.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr have stated publicly that they believe Russia was to blame, the consensus of others in the US government and of the cybersecurity community.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS