Security News > 2021 > January > US government fingers Russia for SolarWinds-based cyberattack
The United States has pinned the blame on Russia for a devastating cyberattack campaign that has hit government agencies and corporations across the country.
In a joint statement, the agencies said that the work "Indicates that an Advanced Persistent Threat actor, likely Russian in origin, is responsible for most or all of the recently discovered, ongoing cyber compromises of both government and non-governmental networks." Further, the group said it believes the incident was designed as an intelligence gathering effort, which means a surveillance operation aimed at finding confidential and sensitive information.
The alarm bells on this matter rang in December when security firm FireEye and other organizations revealed that key US government agencies were compromised by a foreign nation-state in a series of cyberattacks.
Out of the approximately 18,000 government agencies and private sector companies that were affected by the breach, fewer than 10 agencies were compromised by follow-up activities.
Everyone involved in this matter from analyst to expert to the US government also agrees that this breach is a grave matter and one that will take time and effort to investigate and mitigate.
"The government should have already had a rapid response coordinated unit with these capabilities years ago," Brandon Hoffman, chief information security officer at security firm NetEnrich, told TechRepublic.