{"id":9705,"date":"2020-12-22T20:40:05","date_gmt":"2020-12-22T12:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/?p=9705"},"modified":"2020-12-22T20:40:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T12:40:05","slug":"cyberattack-hit-key-us-treasury-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/cyberattack-hit-key-us-treasury-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyberattack hit key US Treasury systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON, Dec 22, 2020 (AFP)<\/strong> – Hackers broke into systems used by top US Treasury officials during a massive cyberattack on government agencies and may have stolen essential encryption keys, a senior lawmaker said Monday.<\/p>\n

Senator Ron Wyden, who sits on both the Senate Intelligence and Finance Committees, said after a closed-door briefing that the hack at the US Treasury Department “appears to be significant.”<\/p>\n

Dozens of email accounts were compromised, he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“Additionally the hackers broke into systems in the Departmental Offices division of Treasury, home to the department’s highest-ranking officials,”<\/em> said Wyden.<\/p>\n

“Treasury still does not know all of the actions taken by hackers, or precisely what information was stolen.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The US government admitted last week that computer systems in multiple departments were penetrated by attackers who hacked in through widely used security software made by the US company SolarWinds.<\/p>\n

Members of Congress briefed by US intelligence, as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General Bill Barr, have all said Russians were behind the hack.<\/p>\n

So far officials have said the hackers broke into computers at the State Department, Commerce Department, Treasury, Homeland Security Department, and the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n

But experts have said they fear far more of the government could be affected, including US intelligence bodies, given the ubiquitousness of the SolarWinds security software.<\/p>\n

Wyden said that the Internal Revenue Service had said there was no evidence that they had been compromised or data on taxpayers taken.<\/p>\n

But he sharply criticized the government for not taking stronger measures to protect its systems.<\/p>\n

The government “has now suffered a breach that seems to involve skilled hackers stealing encryption keys from (government) servers,” he said.<\/p>\n

That has happened despite “years of government officials advocating for encryption backdoors, and ignoring warnings from cybersecurity experts who said that encryption keys become irresistible targets for hackers.” pmh\/jm Agence France-Presse<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON, Dec 22, 2020 (AFP) – Hackers broke into systems used by top US Treasury officials during a massive cyberattack on government agencies and may have stolen essential encryption keys, a senior lawmaker said Monday. Senator Ron Wyden, who sits on both the Senate Intelligence and Finance Committees, said after a closed-door briefing that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.com.ph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}