Tag Archive for: hack

SolarWinds hack may lead to breach notification law and stronger cyber agency

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One of the lesser-known aspects of the SolarWinds hack that lawmakers and top U.S. cybersecurity officials are grappling with is figuring out how many American companies and federal agencies have been affected. 



a man wearing glasses and looking at the camera: From left, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia, SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna and Microsoft CEO Brad Smith testify during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Feb. 23, 2021.

© Provided by Roll Call
From left, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia, SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna and Microsoft CEO Brad Smith testify during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Feb. 23, 2021.

At present, no one knows.

This blind spot stems from the absence of a federal breach notification law that requires companies and federal agencies to notify the U.S. government if they have been hacked. That, however, may be about to change as congressional committees learn more about the SolarWinds hack and lawmakers in both chambers have signaled a bipartisan willingness to consider the idea. 

Last week, lawmakers summoned top tech company executives and the CEO of SolarWinds, the company whose software became the conduit for Russian intelligence agencies to access thousands of American companies and federal agencies. 

SolarWinds was hacked by Russian operatives who injected malware into routine software updates that went out to as many as 18,000 government entities and Fortune 500 companies that were clients of SolarWinds. Top U.S. government officials have said Russian intelligence services were behind the attack and that, as of now, nine federal agencies and about 100 companies were exposed but more victims are likely to be found as the probe continues.

Executives from FireEye, the cybersecurity company that found the Russian attack and made it public in December, Microsoft and SolarWinds told members of Congress that while they had come forward to share details of the attack, they were not obligated to do so and wanted Congress to address that gap. 

Without a law and clear guidance, companies don’t know whom to alert when they’re hacked, Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, said at a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Reform and House Homeland Security committees. 

Companies also face a legal barrier because contracts with federal agencies “restrict a company like Microsoft from sharing with others in the federal…

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Radio Havana Cuba | WikiLeaks Reveals Secret CIA Tools Used to Hack Phones, TVs

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Washington, March 8 (RHC-Xinhua) — WikiLeaks on Tuesday released thousands of documents that it said revealed the secret tools the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has used to hack people’s smartphones, computer operating systems and even smart TVs.

A statement from the anti-secrecy organization said that the 8,761 documents were obtained from “an isolated, high-security network” situated inside the CIA’s hacking division, the Center for Cyber Intelligence, in Langley, Virgina.

“Code-named ‘Vault 7’ by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency,” the statement said, noting the leaks detailed “the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program.”

WikiLeaks said the leaked documents “have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner”, one of whom provided them to WikiLeaks.

By the end of 2016, it said, the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence had over 5,000 people and had produced more than hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other “weaponized” malware.

These hacking programs can target “a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows operating system and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.”

“Such is the scale of the CIA’s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook,” the WikiLeaks statement said.

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Hack sought personal data, but most safe

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Feb. 28—MANKATO — An investigation by Minnesota State University into the improper sharing of nonpublic personal information of students, staff and donors found that 142,226 individuals were affected — more than triple the number reported in December.

But most of the private data was not in the database of a cloud services company that was hacked last summer in a ransomware attack, according to the report completed earlier this month.

The investigation was launched after the discovery of a ransomware attack of the computer systems of Blackbaud, a South Carolina-based cloud services company used by the fundraising arms of numerous nonprofits and colleges, including MSU and South Central College. The hackers potentially had access to a variety of personal information compiled by MSU and SCC and stored with Blackbaud.

The final report completed by Michael Menne, MSU’s chief information security officer, listed the information provided to the MSU Foundation for fundraising purposes that should have been kept private.

“Not-public data shared with the Foundation included country of birth, gender, last 4 digits of Social Security Number, marital status, birth date, TechID, high school and years of attendance, ethnicity, and status as a first-generation college student,” Menne’s report stated.

However, virtually none of that data was accessed during the Blackbaud security breach — the only exception being people’s date of birth.

“Financial data, social security numbers and passwords were not accessed as part of the Foundation’s Blackbaud security incident,” according to the report, which was issued following an investigation conducted by a team of nine MSU officials.

SCC did not do any further investigation since informing 13,282 students, staff, alumni and donors on Dec. 18 of the Blackbaud breach. In SCC’s case, the final conclusion was that the college had improperly shared with its fundraising foundation full Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and campus ID numbers and that the data “may have” been in the compromised Blackbaud database.

Hospital systems, nonprofit organizations and colleges across the country had…

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