White House down: Unidentified hackers breach US government computer security

By Adrian Diaconescu October 29, 2014

white house drone crash linked to drunken intelligence agency worker — Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ableman/ Image used with permission by copyright holder

Cyber security is becoming a bigger concern for government organizations around the world. Only weeks after a report surfaced that NATO’s PCs were breached by hackers, The Washington Post is reporting that hackers have also breached the White House computer network.

The Washington Post reported the incidents happened “two to three weeks ago.” The unnamed hackers are believed to be working for the Russian government. But the White House has not pointed fingers at any group, though we can’t help but suspect the implication of the notorious “Sandworm Team” due to their involvement in recent breaches.

“Sandworm Team” recently targeted not just NATO, but also the Ukrainian government, Western European governmental agencies, Polish energy firms, European telecommunications companies, and US academic groups.

White House officials are playing down the impact of security breaches. Reports suggested the latest breach was more of a nuisance than a real threat because no classified data was compromised, and the “intrusion” was quickly contained. However, in the process of suppressing the threat, some network connections were briefly disturbed. In the words of a White House spokesperson, “some of the measures took to evaluate and mitigate the activity resulted in the disruption of regular services to users”.

The cyber criminals haven’t been apprehended or even identified, despite the FBI, Secret Service and National Security Agency starting a joint investigation on the heels of the shady occurrences. Scary, huh?

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Adrian Diaconescu

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Adrian is a mobile aficionado since the days of the Nokia 3310, and a PC enthusiast since Windows 98. Later, he discovered…

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