Tag: Russian SolarWinds hack

U.S. imposes sweeping sanctions targeting Russian economy

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The Biden administration announced it will sanction dozens of Russian officials and entities, expel 10 diplomats from the U.S., and set new restrictions on buying Russian sovereign debt in response to the massive SolarWinds hack of federal agencies and interference in the 2020 election.

Why it matters: The sweeping acts of retaliation are aimed at imposing heavy economic costs on Russia, after years of sanctions that have failed to deter an increasingly aggressive and authoritarian President Vladimir Putin.

Details: The administration formally accused Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of carrying out the SolarWinds hack, which Microsoft President Brad Smith has called “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.” The intelligence community said it has “high confidence” in the assessment. Continue reading.

Biden administration preparing to sanction Russia for SolarWinds hacks and the poisoning of an opposition leader

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The Biden administration is preparing sanctions and other measures to punish Moscow for actions that go beyond the sprawling SolarWinds cyber­espionage campaign to include a range of malign cyberactivity and the near-fatal poisoning of a Russian opposition leader, said U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The administration is casting the SolarWinds operation, in which government agencies and private companies were hacked, as “indiscriminate” and potentially “disruptive.” That would allow officials to claim that the Russian hacking was not equivalent to the kind of espionage the United States also conducts and to sanction those responsible for the operation.

Officials also are developing defensive measures aimed at making it harder for Russia and other sophisticated adversaries to compromise federal and private-sector computer networks, said the officials, several of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. Continue reading.

Biden has first call with Putin as president

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President Biden spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the first call between the two leaders since Biden was elected president, and pressed the Russian leader on the SolarWinds hack and the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the call took place Tuesday afternoon and Biden intended to communicate his administration’s desire to seek a full five-year extension of the New START nuclear arms treaty with Russia. Biden also planned to raise concerns about ongoing Russian aggression, she said.

The White House later issued a formal readout of the call stating Biden and Putin agreed “to have their teams work urgently” to complete the five-year extension of New START by the Feb. 5 deadline. Continue reading.

Cleaning up SolarWinds hack may cost as much as $100 billion

Government agencies, private corporations will spend months and billions of dollars to root out the Russian malicious code

American businesses and government agencies could be spending upward of $100 billion over many months to contain and fix the damage from the Russian hack against the SolarWinds software used by so many Fortune 500 companies and U.S. government departments.

“Unlike good wine, this case continues to get worse with age,” said Frank Cilluffo, director of Auburn University’s McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security. “For a lot of folks, the more they dig, the worse the picture looks.” 

Not only were at least four government departments targeted by the Kremlin hack — Commerce, Treasury, Homeland Security and Justice — but also thousands of top global corporations who were customers of SolarWinds, Cilluffo said. While government agencies appeared to be primary targets, “it doesn’t mean the private sector isn’t affected as well,” he said.  Continue reading.

US intel agencies blame Russia for massive SolarWinds hack

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A group of U.S. intelligence agencies on Tuesday formally accused Russia of being linked to the recently discovered hack of IT group SolarWinds that compromised much of the federal government.

The FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) attributed the effort to Russia. The group had set up a cyber unified coordination group in December after the compromise of SolarWinds was revealed.

“This work indicates that an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor, likely Russian in origin, is responsible for most or all of the recently discovered, ongoing cyber compromises of both government and non-governmental networks,” the agencies said in a joint statement around their investigation into the cyber incident. Continue reading.