US government agencies hit in global hacking spree
The US cyber watchdog agency said it was still assessing the impact of the hacking campaign.
Several US government agencies have been hit by a global hacking campaign that exploited a vulnerability in widely used software, the US cyber watchdog organization said Thursday.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a statement that several federal agencies had experienced intrusions following the discovery of a weakness in file transfer software MOVEit, said Eric Goldstein, the agency’s executive assistant director of cybersecurity.
“We are working urgently to understand the consequences and ensure timely recovery,” he said.
CISA did not immediately return emails from the Reuters news agency seeking further comment. The FBI and the US National Security Agency also did not immediately return emails requesting details of the breaches.
The United States does not expect a “significant impact” from a cyberattack that hit its government agencies, Jen Easterly, the director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told MSNBC.
The agency worked to fully understand the impact of the attack and coordinated with other agencies to ensure recovery, Easterly said.
“Right now, we’re quickly targeting the federal agencies that may be affected and working hand-in-hand with them to mitigate that risk,” she said.
MOVEit, made by Progress Software Corp, is mostly used by organizations to transfer files between their partners or customers.
It could be used by a financial institution that requires their customers to upload their information to apply for a loan, said John Hammond, a senior researcher at the security firm Huntress, earlier this month.
“There’s a ton of potential for what an opponent could get into,” he said.
The online extortion group Cl0p, which has taken credit for the MOVEit hack, has previously said it would not misuse government agency data.
“IF YOU ARE A GOVERNMENT, CITY OR POLICE OFFICE, DON’T WORRY, WE HAVE GIVEN ALL YOUR DATA,” the group said in a statement on its website.
Neither Cl0p nor Progress immediately responded to requests for comment from Reuters.
Earlier this month, US and UK cybersecurity officials warned that a Russian cyber-extortion gang had hacked MOVEit and that it would have a global impact as the file transfer program was popular with businesses. Zellis, a leading provider of payroll services in the UK serving British Airways, the BBC and hundreds of others, was one of the affected users. The British drugstore chain Boots was also hit.
Last month, Microsoft accused Chinese state-sponsored hackers of launching attacks against critical infrastructure in the United States.