Icon: enlarge
Anne Neuberger from the National Security Council: "We are in the early stages of understanding the full extent"
Photo: Oliver Contreras / imago images / ZUMA Wire
They hacked into the computer systems of ministries, federal agencies and companies: who exactly was responsible for the so-called SolarWinds hack seems unclear even a month after the cyber attack became known.
According to its own information, the US government is still at the beginning of the process.
The US continues to suspect that Russia is the mastermind.
"We are in the early stages to understand the full extent," said Anne Neuberger of the National Security Council on Wednesday in the White House in Washington.
She reckons that it will take "a few more months" before the investigation is completed.
In December, it became known that the US government had been the target of a large-scale hacker attack.
The hackers had penetrated the systems of various ministries, federal agencies, but also companies.
The attackers had gained access to the networks using maintenance software from SolarWinds, which was used in many places, and remained undetected for months.
The case was a painful setback for American security services.
US continues to blame Russia
Neuberger said that they are working on reconstructing the cyber attack piece by piece, finding the attackers and removing them from the systems.
The hackers were extremely adept.
Presumably Russia is behind it.
Until the authorship has been finally clarified, one will stick to this formulation.
After the SolarWinds hack, traces were found in the malicious code that point to the Turla hacker group.
This is known for sophisticated espionage operations on behalf of or with the support of the Russian government.
Former US President Donald Trump defended Russia against the allegations in December.
Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo also suspected Russia was behind the cyber attack.
As things stand, the hackers have penetrated the systems of nine government agencies and around 100 companies, the US Security Council said.
However, it cannot be ruled out that there are other people affected, especially among technology companies.
In parallel to the investigation of the cyber attack, the government is working to close security gaps.
Concrete steps will be announced soon.
In addition, discussions were already underway about an answer to the attack.
Neuberger emphasized that this was not the first cyber attack by Russian attackers on the US or allies.
When choosing the countermeasures, these actions would be considered holistically.
The US agency for cyber and infrastructure security (Cisa) had classified the hacker attack in December as a "serious danger" for the federal government, for state and local governments, for critical infrastructure and for private sector organizations, and declared that the attack was ongoing at least since March.
US security services previously identified Russia as the alleged perpetrator and spoke of an "ongoing" attack.
North Korean programmers charged
Meanwhile, it was also revealed on Wednesday that the US Department of Justice had charged three North Korean computer programmers with a series of "destructive cyberattacks".
The suspects are charged with working for North Korean military intelligence trying to steal or blackmail more than $ 1.3 billion from banks and corporations around the world.
The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed the indictment from early December, which builds on a criminal case against one of the suspects from 2018.
The aim of the attacks was to steal money to finance the regime in Pyongyang or to seek revenge, the investigators said.
The suspects are held responsible for several attacks on the entertainment industry, among other things.
The most prominent example is the attack on the Sony Pictures film studio, which paralyzed the studio's entire computer network for weeks in November 2014.
In addition, e-mails from several years were stolen.
The cyber attack was seen as an act of revenge for the film satire "The Interview" about a fictitious attack on North Korea's ruler Kim Jong Un.
Icon: The mirror
ptz / dpa
