Russian hackers blamed for White House cyber attacks

09 Apr 2015

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Russian hackers behind the damaging cyber intrusion of the State Department in recent months had also penetrated sensitive parts of the White House computer system, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

Though the White House claimed the breach had only affected an unclassified system, that description did not adequately describe the scale of the intrusion.

The hackers were able to access sensitive information such as real-time non-public details of the president's schedule and though the information was not classified, it was still highly sensitive and prized by foreign intelligence agencies, according to US officials.

In October, the White House said it noticed suspicious activity in the unclassified network that served the executive office of the president. The system had had periodic shutdowns for security upgrades.

The FBI, Secret Service and US intelligence agencies jointly investigated the breach, which they considered among the most sophisticated attacks ever launched against US government systems.

Though the intrusion was routed through computers around the world, as normally hackers do to cover their tracks, according to investigators the tell-tale codes and other markers they found point to hackers working for the Russian government.

Meanwhile, Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser acknowledged on Tuesday that the unclassified computer systems at the US presidential mansion were vulnerable to hackers.

Rhodes did not confirm that sensitive information had been accessed, and neither did he comment on where the threat originated, but said there was always vulnerability, which was the reason White House operated a separate, secure system for classified data.

"We have classified systems that are secure and we take regular precautions to secure our own classified networks as well. I think we were very up front in acknowledging a cyber intrusion last year, so that is not new. We don't talk about where cyber intrusions originate from because we are constantly taking actions to prevent them," Rhodes told reporters.

 

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