On December 22, 2020 President Joe Baiden reported Pentagon about not briefing his team on such a crucial matter like the Russian hack against the Federal government department and agencies.
Some of the senior members of the Trump’s administration claim that Donald Trump has failed in pointing fingers at Moscow that hacked a number of government agencies.
Biaden also added that the attacks resemble to the Russian pattern of inimical behaviour and he was sure about who was behind the attack.
In the earlier months, it was revealed that the attackers have compromised the systems of Solar Winds which had many US government offices as customers.
Using these infected systems the hackers were able to breach government networks. The attack severely affected the departments like Commerce, Treasury, State, Defence and Energy.
The cyber researchers have characterized the attack as sophisticated and said it would be a tough job to remove the threat actor from the compromised systems.
President Donald Trump took no action against Moscow rather exclaimed that “everything is well under control”, when both of his personal secretaries Mike Pompeo and William Barr was pretty much sure that Russia was behind the cyber-attack.
Baiden highlights about the inefficiency of the Defence department to brief about the critical issues.
The Attack
During the Election Day, the nation’s top cyber warrior, General Paul M Nakasone reported that the war against Russia in the campaign of Presidential election has found success and exposed online weapons, tradecrafts and tools.
After eight weeks, a hack was believed to have affected around 250 Federal agencies and businesses which Russia aimed at not the election system but the government of United States and American corporations.
Even after weeks of the attack, the authorities were still trying to figure out whether the Russians pulled off the attack or were it just an espionage operation inside the system that created a back door access to the major corporations, government agencies or the lab & electric grids that is used for the generation of nuclear weapons.
The breach was considered to happen when Russia sent its probes to around 18,000 government and private networks which gained access by inserting a malicious code into the network management software of Solar Winds, a Texas based company.
The hackers invaded the servers and exploited legal prohibitions on National Security Agency by implanting domestic surveillance that allowed cyber defences.
There are intuitions that the Russians were trying to shake the security of Washington’s confidence and gain a grip against the election.
Need Years to ‘overcome’
Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Susan Gordon exclaimed that the attack will take years to overcome.
This threat was first discovered by the US cyber security company Fire Eye.
The Solar wind has released their new patch that requests their customers to immediately update their existing Orion Platform.
They also added that if any hacking activity is sensed in an environment, they recommend conducting a comprehensive investigation and executing a strategy driven by the findings.
Those who are unable to update were advised to isolate Solar Wind’s servers which includes blocking all the internet access from Solar wind servers.
Another prevention criterion was to change the passwords of the account that has access to Solar wind infrastructures or servers.
The Cyber Infrastructure agency along with the US cyber security has released an emergency directive requesting all the Federal civilization agencies to analyse their networks as an indicator of compromise.
Soon after the attack, Solar winds Orion products were asked to power down or disconnect immediately.
This incident has shaken the US government. The repercussion of the Solar winds attack are still being unravelled as the Baiden administration settles in, it will have to contend with the aftermath of this hack and also work to prevent security lapses that can endanger national security in the future.