WASHINGTON (AP) – Contradicting his Secretary of State and other top officials, President Donald Trump suggested without evidence that China – not Russia – may be behind the cyber-espionage operation against the United States and tried to minimize its impact.
In his initial comments on the breach, Trump mocked the focus on the Kremlin and downplayed the intruders, which the national cybersecurity agency had warned. a “serious” risk to government and private networks.
“The cyber hack is much greater in the fake news media than in reality. I have been briefed completely and everything is well under control, ”Trump tweeted on Saturday. He also claimed the media is “petrified” of “discussing the possibility that it could be China (it could be!).”
There is no indication that this is the case. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said late Friday that Russia was “quite clearly” behind the operation against the United States.
“This was a very important effort and I think it is so that we can now say quite clearly that it was the Russians who engaged in this activity,” Pompeo said in the interview with Mark Levin, the radio host’s host.
White House officials were ready to issue a statement Friday afternoon accusing Russia of being “the protagonist” in the hack, but were told at the last minute to step down, according to a US official familiar with the hack. conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
It’s not clear if Pompeo got that message before his interview, but officials are now trying to figure out how to straighten the various accounts. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the statement or the basis of Trump’s claims. The State Department also did not respond to questions about Pompeo’s comments.
During his presidency, Trump has refused to blame Russia for well-documented hostilities, including his meddling in the 2016 election to help him get elected. He blamed his predecessor, Barack Obama, for Russia’s annexation of Crimea, has agreed to allow Russia to return to the G-7 group of nations and has never held the country to account for it. reportedly gave bounties to US soldiers in Afghanistan.
“The president has a blind spot when it comes to Russia,” said Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah. He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Trump “doesn’t want to recognize Russia as the problem they are and the extraordinarily bad actor they are on the world stage. … The reality is, Russia is really a geopolitical opponent. They’re going on.” every front against us. “
Pompeo said in the interview that the government was still “unpacking” the cyber-espionage operation and that some of it would likely remain classified.
“But suffice it to say that a significant effort has been made to use a piece of third-party software to essentially embed code into US government systems and it now resembles private and corporate and government systems across the board. whole world, ”he said. .
Although Pompeo was the first Trump government official to publicly blame Russia for the break-in, cybersecurity experts and other US officials made it clear over the past week that the operation appears to be Russia’s work. There is no plausible suggestion that any other country – including China – is responsible.
Democrats in Congress who have received secret briefings have also publicly confirmed that Russia, which hacked the State Department in 2014 and interfered with hacking in the 2016 presidential election, was behind it.
It’s not clear exactly what the hackers were looking for, but experts say it could include nuclear secrets, advanced weapons blueprints, COVID-19 vaccine-related research, and information for files on government and industry leaders.
Russia has said it has “nothing to do” with the hacking.
While Trump downplayed the impact of the hacks, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has said it endangers both federal agencies and “critical infrastructure.” Homeland Security, the agency’s parent company, defines such infrastructure as all “essential” assets for the US or the economy, a broad category that can include power plants and financial institutions.
A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity on Thursday to discuss a case under investigation, described the hack as serious and extraordinarily damaging.
“This looks like it is the worst hacking case in America’s history,” the official said. “They got into everything.”
Trump had been silent about the hacks on Saturday.
Deputy White House press secretary Brian Morgenstern declined to discuss the matter on Friday, but told reporters that national security adviser Robert O’Brien had sometimes conducted multiple daily meetings with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the intelligence community, looking for ways to soften the hack.
“Rest assured, we have the best and brightest people working hard on it every day,” he said.
Democratic leaders of four house committees who received secret government briefings about the hack complained that they “had more questions than answers.”
“Administration officials were unwilling to share the full extent of the breach and the identity of the victims,” they said.
Pompeo said in the interview with Levin that Russia was on the list of “people who want to undermine our way of life, our republic, our basic democratic principles. … You see the news of the day regarding their efforts in cyberspace. We’ve been through this for a long time, using asymmetric capabilities to try and put ourselves in a place where they can impose charges on the United States. “
What makes this hacking campaign so extraordinary is its size: 18,000 organizations were infected from March to June by malicious code running on popular network management software from an Austin, Texas company called SolarWinds.
It’s going to take months to kick elite hackers out of US government networks that they’ve been quietly snooping through since March.
Experts say there are simply not enough skilled teams hunting for threats to properly identify all government and private sector systems that may have been hacked. FireEye, the cybersecurity company that discovered the breach against US agencies and was among the victims, has already counted dozens of victims. It’s racing to identify more.
Many federal workers – and others in the private sector – have to assume that unclassified networks are teeming with spies. Agencies will be more likely to handle sensitive government affairs with Signal, WhatsApp and other encrypted smartphone apps.
If the hackers are indeed from Russia’s foreign intelligence agency SVR, as experts believe, their resistance may be stubborn.
The only way to make sure a network is clean is “to burn it down and rebuild it,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard fellow.
Florida became the first state to be recognized as a victim of a SolarWinds hack. Officials told The Associated Press that hackers had apparently infiltrated the state health care agency and others.
SolarWinds’ clients include most of the Fortune 500 companies, and the US government clients are rich with generals and spymasters.
___
The Associated Press authors Frank Bajak in Boston, Eric Tucker in Washington, and Bobby Caina Calvan in Tallahassee, Florida contributed to this report.