US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo became the first US official to publicly attribute a massive piracy campaign to Russia, after revelations that large sectors of the federal government and the private sector were at risk.
Pompeo said, in an interview with the “Mark Levin Show” program, Friday, “This was a very big effort, and I think that we can now say very clearly that it was the Russians who participated in this activity,” and this comes while a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin denied The Kremlin was involved, and the Russian embassy said, in a statement, that “the country does not carry out offensive operations in the cyber field.”
The sprawling attack, which continued undetected for nearly nine months, damaged the Ministries of Internal Security, Justice, Treasury, Foreign Affairs and Energy, as well as a growing list of companies and local governments across the country, according to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”.
Officials in the country’s cybersecurity agency warn that reversing the breach is difficult, saying that hackers “have demonstrated sophisticated sophistication and craftsmanship” and that it is possible that they built additional secret back doors while operating inside the compromised networks. Experts say there simply aren’t enough skilled teams to look for Threats to properly identify all government and private sector systems that may have been compromised, and warn that infected networks may have to “burn to the ground” and rebuild from scratch.
Democrats in Congress spoke of the cyber attack in strong terms, demanding a harsh response and attacking President Donald Trump, who has not spoken about the attack or appeared in public for the past five days. Representative Jason Crowe, a Colorado Democrat, said in a tweet Friday: “The situation is taking hold.” Evolution, but the more I know this may be our modern age, the cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor. “
He added: Before Trump was criticized for his lack of a public response to a cyber attack, this cyber attack may be the largest in our history, while Senator Chris Koons, a Democrat from Delaware, said: “It is very difficult to distinguish between this and an act of aggression that rises to the level of attack. Which is war. “
Koons, 57, described the attack as a “devastating and widespread attack with our military and intelligence systems as it has happened in my life.” Trump has not yet said anything publicly about this attack, while White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern said, Reporters on Friday that it is being informed “as needed.”
A White House spokesman said, “National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien has been leading interagency meetings daily, if not often … They are working hard on mitigating and making sure our country is safe. We will not go into many details because we will not.” We tell our opponents what we’re doing to combat these things. ”The Democratic presidents of four House committees, who received secret briefings about the breach by the Trump administration, also issued a statement complaining that they“ left more questions than answers. ”