CISA has not said who it thinks is the “advanced persistent threat actor” behind the “significant and ongoing” campaign, but many experts are pointing to Russia.
“The magnitude of this ongoing attack is hard to overstate,” former Trump Homeland Security Advisor Thomas Bossert said in a piece for The New York Times on Thursday. “The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months.”
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the accusations, according to the Tass news agency.
“Even if it is true there have been some attacks over many months and the Americans managed to do nothing about them, possibly it is wrong to groundlessly blame Russians right away,” he told Tass. “We have nothing to do with this.”
The Russian Embassy in London did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The FBI said Wednesday it is “investigating and gathering intelligence in order to attribute, pursue, and disrupt the responsible threat actors.”
At this stage, it’s not clear what the hackers have done beyond accessing top-secret government networks and monitoring data.
Hackers also accessed systems at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, according to the Politico news site, citing officials familiar with the matter.
Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/18/suspected-russian-hack-on-us-is-much-worse-than-first-feared.html
Comments