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The Federal Agency for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security (CISA) recently reported widespread hacks involving government agencies and private companies – an apparent attack linked to Russia that may have gone unreported for nine months.
The hack compromised federal agencies and “critical infrastructure” in a sophisticated attack that was difficult to detect and will be difficult to reverse, CISA announced Thursday in an unusual warning message.
Established under President Trump’s leadership in 2018, the CISA operates under the supervision of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Its activities are an extension of the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD). CISA was created when Trump signed the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Act.
CISA’s mission is to “strengthen the national cyberattack defense capacity” and to work “with the federal government to provide cybersecurity tools, incident response services and assessment capabilities to protect .gov networks that support the essential operations of partner ministries and agencies. “
CISA is an independent branch of DHS, on par with the Secret Service or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
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Christopher Krebs was the first director of CISA. He was sacked by President Donald Trump in November.
Like the NPPD, CISA oversees the Federal Protection Service (FPS), the Office of Cyber and Infrastructure Analysis (OCIA), the Office of Cybersecurity & Communications (OC&C) and the Office of Infrastructure Protection ( OIP).
In an effort to reduce CISA’s backlog of cybersecurity vulnerability assessments, a Senate committee recently proposed to offer CISA an additional $ 59 million in the 2021 budget.
For the 2020 election, the agency carried out 131 remote penetration tests and 59 on-site risk and vulnerability assessments for local electoral infrastructure and around 263 election officials across the country are receiving analysis reports weekly vulnerabilities. He has also helped train thousands of election officials through online safety courses.
This month, CISA reported a massive and ongoing hacking campaign that allegedly began in March and is believed to be the work of Russia. The Department of Energy, State Department, Defense Department and DHS have all reported being compromised. These branches of government join previous assessments confirming that the Treasury and Commerce departments were violated in what investigators see as a large-scale Russian intelligence operation.
On Sunday, CISA announced the intrusion involving SolarWinds Orion products, which is currently the subject of an FBI investigation, and ordered all federal agencies to log off the hacked network management software.
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SolarWinds’ client list spans some 300,000 organizations – including other very sensitive federal agencies ranging from the Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as well as thousands of private companies.
According to the New York Times, almost all Fortune 500 companies would use SolarWinds products to analyze their networks, including major defense contractors such as Boeing.
Russia has denied any involvement in the campaign.
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Nonetheless, preliminary examinations of the encroachments suspect that the sophistication of the attacks lends itself to the work of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR – the spy wing that succeeded the former Soviet Union secret police, the KGB) . The belief that SVR is the root cause of attacks stems from the fact that hackers are particularly good at extracting data from particular targets.
Hollie McKay of Fox News contributed to this report.
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