‘The Scale Is Daunting’
“The scale is daunting. We don’t know what has been taken so that is one of the tasks for forensics,” Lewis said, according to the AFP news agency.
“We also don’t know what’s been left behind. The normal practice is to leave something behind so they can get back in in the future,” Lewis said.
The cyberattack was first reported on December 13 in news reports that quoted unidentified U.S. officials as saying Russia-based hackers were suspected.
Russia’s U.S. Embassy has denied any involvement, saying in a statement on December 14 that Russia “does not conduct offensive operations in the cyber domain.”
The Department of Homeland Security, the Treasury Department, and the Commerce Department were among those affected in the attack, according to media reports that quoted unidentified officials with knowledge of the cyberattack.
The Department of Energy acknowledged on December 17 that it was among those that had been hacked. The department includes the agency that manages the country’s nuclear-weapons stockpile.
The FBI and other agencies investigating an extensive cyberattack on U.S. government computer networks briefed members of Congress on December 18 about the intrusion.
SolarWinds admitted on December 16 that hackers from an “outside nation state” inserted malicious code into updates of its network management software issued between March and June this year.
