Attorney General William Barr said on Monday that Russia “appears” to be behind a hack that targeted the software company SolarWinds and affected several US government agencies.
Barr was the second Trump administration official to pin the blame on Moscow, after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. President Trump downplayed the idea of Russian involvement and shifted the blame to China in a tweet on Saturday. Breaking from Trump, Barr said he agrees with Pompeo’s claim.
“From the information I have, I agree with Secretary Pompeo’s assessment, it certainly appears to be the Russians but I’m not going to discuss it beyond that,” he said at a news conference. Barr contradicting the president is no surprise, as the attorney general is stepping down from his position later this week.
Since the hack was first reported by the cybersecurity firm FireEye, many in the media and in Congress were quick to blame Russia, despite a lack of evidence. Details of the cyberattack are also scant, although the media is portraying it as one of the largest attacks on US cyberinfrastructure in years.
On Monday, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) shared details of intrusions into the Treasury Department’s servers and said, “dozens of email accounts were compromised.” He said the department “still does not know all of the actions taken by hackers, or precisely what information was stolen.”
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin addressed the issue on Monday. “At this point, we do not see any break-in into our classified systems,” he said. “Our unclassified systems did have some access.” So far, the Treasury Department is the first government agency to acknowledge specific cyber intrusions.
In reporting Mnuchin’s and Wyden’s comments, The New York Times parroted the claim that Russia was responsible as fact. Reporter David Sanger, who co-authored the piece, was asked how he knew Russia was behind the cyberattack in an interview with The Daily last week.
“Well a few things, first, the skill level. This was done with a precision and with an understanding of the systems that 97 percent of the world’s best hackers wouldn’t have the time or the resources to pull off,” Sanger said.
While Sanger says the hack was sophisticated, a cybersecurity expert who previously advised SolarWinds holds a different opinion. Security expert Vinoth Kumar told Reuters that he warned SolarWinds in 2019 that the company’s update server could be easily accessed since the password was “solarwinds123.”
“This could have been done by any attacker, easily,” Kumar said.
But Sanger has other reasons to believe the Russians hacked SolarWinds. “The second thing is they used certain techniques that had been seen before by the Russians. It had the markings not just of the Russians but of a particular intelligence agency within Russia called the SVR,” he said.
Sanger’s interview was published on December 16th. On December 17th, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency put out an alert that said the actor responsible likely has “tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that have not yet been discovered.”
Identifying TTPs is a common way the US government accuses Russia of cyber intrusions. Federal agencies often say hackers used TTPs consistent with previous Russian government activity, offering that assessment as the only proof to substantiate claims of Russian hacking. New TTPs suggest the government has less of an idea of who carried out the attack than Sanger claims.
I knew they were blowing smoke when they resurrected “Cozy Bear”.
I notice that in all this brouhaha what’s not mentioned by Dave “Deep State” Sanger and his chorus in the MSM is that this is nothing more than spying. It is done by every significant country in the world all the time. We ourselves do it more than anyone.
So, assuming it’s actually a foreign country and not some internal issue, it doesn’t matter if it’s Russkies, Chinese, or some other designated enemy, the issue should be the vulnerability of our systems not that some foreign country is exploiting that vulnerability.
Solar Winds and Fire Eye are still in business, even though major investors sold heavily before “the hack” came to light.
On his way out, Barr is trying to rehabilitate his reputation with the Neocons.
and Barr is not aware of any hacking by us or any of our friendlies of other country’s systems? Israel’s hacking of Iran comes immediately to mind. Hypocrites!
So let me get this straight, as soon as deep state neocons have a completely pliant tool in office, Russia decides to launch a cyber 9/11 right on cue….
Sure, that doesn’t sound at all like a neocons perfect wet dream.
What would you say if I suggested the globalists are behind the cyber attack . The same globalists that have kept the virus pandemic active and ongoing in the USA . The same globalists that have been destroying the US economy and stopped Donald Trump from making America great again .
I’d say your batshit crazy.
“Mr. Trump’s pardon list also included four former U.S. service members who were convicted on charges related to the killing of Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007.”
“One of them, Nicholas Slatten, had been sentenced to life in prison after the Justice Department had gone to great lengths to prosecute him. Mr. Slatten had been a contractor for the private company Blackwater and was sentenced for his role in the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad — a massacre that left one of the most lasting stains of the war on the United States. Among those dead were two boys, who were 8 and 11.”
‘batshit crazy’ has taken on a whole new meaning lately.
Who cares about actual facts or real evidence that can stand up to scrutiny by impartial 3rd parties. What someone believes is irrelevant, what one suspects is irrelevant. The fact that it forwards a particular political agenda should be more than enough evidence to disbelieve anything they claim