The worst may yet come, as the Department of Homeland Security continues to unravel the damage caused by the cyber attack on SolarWinds server software that puts federal and private computer systems at “serious risk.”
The full range of intrusions, which began in March, “has not yet been discovered,” Homeland Security’s Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) admitted in a bulletin on Thursday.
“We are still undoing exactly what it is,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged on Friday in an interview with Mark Levin – where he blamed Russia for the first time since news of the December 13 raid.
Several federal agencies, including the Pentagon, the National Nuclear Safety Administration of the Department of Energy and the Departments of Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security itself, have been compromised by the breach – along with an unknown number of private corporations, including Cisco Systems and Cox Communications.
President Trump has been robbed by members of Congress, including members of his own party, such as Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah), for “not … speaking out aggressively and protesting and taking punitive action” against Moscow. , Romney said Friday.
But the administration is working behind the scenes, Pompeo said.
“There are a lot of things you’d love to say, ‘Boy, I’m going to tell you this,'” he said. “But a wiser action to protect the American people is to take care of your business and defend freedom.”
The hackers, who relied on widely used SolarWinds server software, “demonstrated patience, operational security and complex crafts in these intrusions,” the CISA newsletter said – and neutralizing the threat “will be extremely complex and challenging.” “.