The worst may be yet to come as the Department of Homeland Security continues to untangle the damage done by the cyber attack on SolarWinds server software, putting federal and private computer systems at “grave risk”.
The full range of break-ins, which began in March, “has not yet been discovered,” Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) admitted in a bulletin on Thursday.
“We are still unpacking what it is,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted Friday during an interview with Mark Levin – where he placed the blame on Russia for the first time since the news of the December 13 raid.
Multiple federal agencies, including the Pentagon, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Departments of Commerce, Finance, and Homeland Security themselves, were compromised by the breach – along with an unknown number of private companies, including Cisco Systems and Cox Communications. .
President Trump has been criticized 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 measures” against Moscow, Romney said Friday.
But the administration is working behind the scenes, Pompeo said.
“There are a lot of things you would really like to say, ‘Boy, I’m going to cry out’,” he said. “But it is wiser to protect the American people by acting calmly and defending freedom.”
The hackers, piggybacking on the widely used SolarWinds server software, “showed patience, operational security and intricate craftsmanship in these breaches,” said the CISA bulletin – and neutralizing the threat “will be very complex and challenging.”