Several US federal government agencies have been hit in a global cyberattack that exploits a vulnerability in widely used software, according to a top US cybersecurity agency.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “is providing support to several federal agencies that have experienced intrusions affecting their MOVEit applications,” Eric Goldstein, the agency’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said in a statement on Thursday to CNN, referring to the software impacted. “We are working urgently to understand impacts and ensure timely remediation.”
It was not immediately clear if the hackers responsible for breaching the federal agencies were a Russian-speaking ransomware group that has claimed credit for numerous other victims in the hacking campaign.
The Department of Energy was among the multiple federal agencies breached in the ongoing global hacking campaign, a department spokesperson confirmed to CNN, adding that the department “took immediate steps” to mitigate the impact of the hack after learning that records from two department “entities” had been compromised.
“The Department has notified Congress and is working with law enforcement, CISA [the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency], and the affected entities to investigate the incident and mitigate impacts from the breach,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
A source familiar with the investigation told CNN that one of the Department of Energy victims is a contractor for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which was first reported by Federal News Network.
A CISA spokesperson had no comment when asked by CNN who carried out the hack of federal agencies and how many have been affected.
Agencies were much quicker Thursday to deny they’d been affected by the hacking than to confirm they were. The Transportation Security Administration and the State Department said they were not victims of the hack.
CISA Director Jen Easterly told MSNBC on Thursday that she was “confident” that there will not be “significant impacts” to federal agencies from the hacks because of the government’s defensive improvements.
But the news adds to a growing tally of victims of a sprawling hacking campaign that began two weeks ago and has hit major US universities and state governments.
The hacking spree mounts pressure on federal officials who have pledged to put a dent in the scourge of ransomware attacks that have hobbled schools, hospitals and local governments across the US.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the university’s renowned health system said in a statement this week that “sensitive personal and financial information,” including health billing records may have been stolen in the hack.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s state-wide university system – which spans the 40,000-student University of Georgia along with over a dozen other state colleges and universities – confirmed it was investigating the “scope and severity” of the hack.
A Russian-speaking hacking group known as CLOP last week claimed credit for some of the hacks, which have also affected employees of the BBC, British Airways, oil giant Shell, and state governments in Minnesota and Illinois, among others.
The Russian hackers were the first to exploit the vulnerability, but experts say other groups may now have access to software code needed to conduct attacks.
