Several US Authorities Hacked Including US Treasury

According to media reports, several authorities in the USA have been victims of hacking attacks. The attacks controlled by a foreign government were therefore aimed at the US Treasury and the NTIA telecommunications authority, which is part of the US Department of Commerce.

The government is now doing everything “to identify and solve possible problems,” said John Ullyot, spokesman for the National Security Council in the White House.

The Washington Post reported that hackers with ties to the Russian secret service SWR were responsible for the attacks on the Treasury and Commerce Department and other US authorities. It is unclear what information was stolen. The cyber-attacks had been going on for months. These are the same hackers who attacked the FireEye IT security company that US authorities often use in cyberattacks. 

Access to ministry mail

According to media reports, some of the attackers had access to the internal mail traffic of the ministry and the NTIA for months. There are now concerns among US intelligence agencies that other government agencies may have been hacked with similar tools. The extent of the attack is still uncertain. It was only on Tuesday that the IT security company FireEye itself became a victim of a hacker attack. According to the company, the perpetrators’ actions pointed to a state-organized attack. The hackers would have targeted information on government customers and diagnostic applications from the company.