Biden vows to make cybersecurity priority after America hacked

Federal authorit i e s expressed increased alarm yesterday about an intrusion into US and other computer s yste ms around t he gl obe t hat officials suspect was carried out by Russian hackers.

The nation’s cybersecurity agency warned of a “grave” ri sk to government and private networks.

The Cybersecurit y and I nf r astructure Security Agency said in its most detailed comments yet that the intrusion had compromised federal agenc i e s as well as “c r i t i c al i nf r astructure” in a sophisticated att ack that was hard to detect and will be difficult to undo.

Cisa did not say which agencies or infrastructure had been breached or what information taken in an attack t hat i t previously said appeared to have begun in March.

“Thi s t hre at ac t or has demonstrated sophistication and complex tradecraft in these intrusions,” the agency said in its unusual alert.

“Cisa expects that removing the t hre at ac t or f rom c ompromised environments will be highly complex and challenging.”

The hack, if authorities can indeed prove it was carried out by a nation s uch as Russia as exper t s bel i eve, creates a fresh foreign policy problem f or President Donald Trump i n hi s final days in office.

Trump, whose administration has been c r i t i c i s ed f or el i minating a White House cybersecurit y adviser and downplaying Russian i nterference in the 2016 presidential election, has made no public statements about the breach.

President- elect Joe Biden said he would make c ybersecurit y a t op priority of his administration, but that stronger defences are not enough.

“We need to disrupt and deter our adversar i es f rom under t aki ng s i gni f i c ant c yberatt acks i n t he first place,” he said.

“We will do that by, among other things, imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious att acks, including in co- ordination with our allies and partners.”

The c ybersecur i t y agenc y previ ously s ai d t he perpetrators had used network management software from Texas-based Solarwinds to infilt r ate c omputer net works. I t s new alert said the attackers may have used other methods, as well.

Over the weekend, amid reports t hat t he Tre asur y and Commerce depar t ments were bre ached, Ci s a directed all civilian agencies of the f ederal government to re move Solarwinds from their servers.

The c ybersecurit y agenc i e s of Bri t ai n and I re l and i s s ued s i milar alerts.

A US of f i c i al previously s ai d Russia- based hackers were s uspected, but neither Cisa nor the FBI has publicly said who is believed be responsible. Asked whether Russia was behind t he at t ack , t he of f i c i al said: “We believe so. We haven’t said t hat publicly yet bec ause it i s n’t 100 per cent confirmed.”

Another US official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter t hat i s under i nvestigation, s ai d t he hack was s evere and ext re mely damaging al t hough t he administration was not yet ready to publicly blame anyone for it.

“This is looking like it’s the worst hacking c as e in t he hi s t or y of America,” the official said. “They got into everything.”

The official said the administration i s working on t he as s umption t hat most, if not all, government agencies were compromised but the extent of the damage was not yet known.

Ci sa offic i als did not respond t o questions and so it was unclear what it meant by a “grave threat” or by critical infrastructure. The Department of Homeland Secur i t y, its parent agency, defines such infrastructure as any “vital” assets to the US or its economy, a broad category that could inc l ude power pl ants and f i nanc i al institutions.

Among t he busine s s s ec t ors scrambling to protect their systems and assess potential theft of information are defence contractors, technol o gy c ompanies and providers of telecommunications and the electric grid.

A group led by CEOS in the electric power i ndustr y s ai d it held a “situational awareness call” earlier this week to help electric companies and public power utili t i es i dentif y whether t he c ompromise posed a threat to their networks.