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Business News/ News / India/  Cyberattack on US Nuclear agency, Microsoft Prez says it's a moment of reckoning
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Cyberattack on US Nuclear agency, Microsoft Prez says it's a moment of reckoning

The US nuclear weapons agency and three states were hacked as part of a suspected Russian cybersecurity breach that struck a number of federal government agencies. Reuters reported that Microsoft Corp. was also breached, but the company denied its products were used to further attacks on others.

Brad Smith said the government should form a bipartisan expert commission over the use of facial recognition technology. Photo: BloombergPremium
Brad Smith said the government should form a bipartisan expert commission over the use of facial recognition technology. Photo: Bloomberg

Microsoft said it detected a malicious version of the software from SolarWinds inside the company. However, denying a Reuters report, the company said that its investigation so far showed no evidence that hackers had used Microsoft systems to attack customers.

Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw said the company had found malicious code “in our environment, which we isolated and removed."

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“We have not found evidence of access to production services or customer data," he said in a tweet. “Our investigations, which are ongoing, have found absolutely no indications that our systems were used to attack others."

Earlier on Thursday, as per a Bloomberg report, the U.S. nuclear weapons agency and at least three states were hacked as part of a suspected Russian cyber-attack that struck a number of federal government agencies.

The Energy Department and its National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains America’s nuclear stockpile, were targeted as part of the larger attack, according to a person familiar with the matter. An ongoing investigation has found the hack didn’t affect “mission-essential national security functions," Shaylyn Hynes, a Department of Energy spokeswoman, said in a statement.

On Thursday, an advisory signaled the widening alarm over the breach, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the hackers posed a “grave risk" to federal, state and the local governments, as well as critical infrastructure and the private sector.

"It's a moment of reckoning"

Responding to such attacks, Microsoft President Brad Smith tweeted, The latest nation-state attack is not espionage as usual, even in the digital age. Instead, it’s an act of recklessness that has created a serious and eye-opening vulnerability for the US and the world. Governments and industry must do more.

The tweet followed a blog by the President which said, this latest cyber-assault is effectively an attack on the United States and its government and other critical institutions, including security firms. It illuminates the ways the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve and become even more dangerous.

Pointing it as a moment of reckoning, Smith said, "It requires that we look with clear eyes at the growing threats we face and commit to more effective and collaborative leadership by the government and the tech sector in the United States to spearhead a strong and coordinated global cybersecurity response."

The attack unfortunately represents a broad and successful espionage-based assault on both the confidential information of the U.S. Government and the tech tools used by firms to protect them, the blog said.

"There are broader ramifications as well, which are even more disconcerting. First, while governments have spied on each other for centuries, the recent attackers used a technique that has put at risk the technology supply chain for the broader economy," the Microsoft president wrote in the blog.

Recent cyberattacked sectors

  • 44% of the targets were in the IT sector, including software firms, IT services and equipment providers.
  • US government targets are involved in finance, national security, health and telecommunications, while the government contractor victims primarily support defense and national security organisations.

Smith pointed out the three initiatives that need to be taken to avert such attacks in the future. He said, put simply, we need a more effective national and global strategy to protect against cyberattacks. "First, we need to take a major step forward in the sharing and analysis of threat intelligence. Second, we need to strengthen international rules to put reckless nation-state behavior out of bounds and ensure that domestic laws thwart the rise of the cyberattack ecosystem," he said adding, "Finally, we need stronger steps to hold nation-states accountable for cyberattacks."

Biden's Pledge

While President Donald Trump has yet to publicly address the hack, President-elect Joe Biden issued a statement Thursday on “what appears to be a massive cybersecurity breach affecting potentially thousands of victims, including U.S. companies and federal government entities."

“I want to be clear: My administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government -- and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office," Biden said, pledging to impose “substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks."

Russia, meanwhile, has denied any involvement in the attack.

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Published: 18 Dec 2020, 08:19 AM IST
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