Certain foreign hackers have reportedly been able to breach the networks of the United States Department of Energy as well as the National Nuclear Security Administration! This hack was reportedly made by another set of state-sponsored hackers.

Hackers attack once again

According to Bloomberg, there are still not that many details on exactly what happened. However, it is currently believed that there are at least three different states that were all hacked in connection to the recent cybersecurity attack. Certain federal investigators have reportedly spent the remaining last few days all trying to piece together exactly what happened. 

Officials over at the two different agencies, the latter of which is known to maintain the country's very own nuclear weapon stockpile, stated that they do not know if these hackers were in fact able to access anything else. Moreover, it might still take a couple of weeks before they finally have a sense of the entire extent of the damage, according to the story by Engadget.

Cyberattackers use SolarWinds' software

It is currently believed that the hackers have gained access to the network through the use of the software of a certain company called SolarWinds known to sell IT management for a number of private and public sector organizations. According to a report by Reuters, even Microsoft might have been a victim of this as well.

The particular Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency or CISA, the FBI, and even the Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement saying the whole incident is still a developing situation and that they will continue to work in order to understand up to what extent the campaign is. They also stated that they know that this compromise has been able to affect the networks within the official federal government.

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Alleged Russian state-sponsored hackers

The officials have reportedly not yet identified the perpetrator but certain cybersecurity experts over at Politico and Bloomberg stated that the incident has every hallmark of Russia's own intelligence service. The country has officially denied any involvement in the recent attack.

Russia's very own APT29, which is also known by another name, Cozy Bear, has recently been active over the course of the last month. This particular state-sponsored group is said to be linked to even the recent Treasury Department as well as NTIA attacks. It is also believed to have actually been behind the theft of a certain cybersecurity firm called FireEye's tools. The attacks reportedly come at a certain time that the United States does not have much in the particular way of cybersecurity leadership. 

The country is currently without a top cybersecurity leader. This could be a huge danger for the nation as cybersecurity attacks occur more often and there is a growing threat in cyberspace as hackers seem to get even better over time. This 2020 has seen a number of alleged state-sponsored attacks targeting big companies and even government offices.

Related Article: Gmail Hacked 2020: How to Check if Your Account is Pawned and How to Secure

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Written by Urian Buenconsejo

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