Biden and lawmakers raise alarms over cybersecurity breach amid Trump’s silence Anne Gearan, Karoun Demirjian, Mike DeBonis, Annie Linskey
Democrats and some Republicans raised the alarm Thursday about a massive and growing cybersecurity breach that many experts blame on Russia, with President-elect Joe Biden implicitly criticizing the Trump administration for allowing the hacking attack to occur.
“We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyber attacks in the first place,” Biden said in a statement. “Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation.”
US Government Reliance on Commercial Software Makes It Susceptible to Future Cyber Attacks
On 12/17/20 at 8:59 PM EST
The cyber supply chain attack that infiltrated a software company used by top federal and corporate institutions is just a preview of larger risks that lie ahead. A certain level of system vulnerability is unavoidable in a world where the government must assume that private sector certifications consistently meet the security standards that adequately protect some of our most valued information.
Experts say the problem, at its heart, is a matter of time and trust. How do you know what s going on in your computer? asks Herbert Lin, leading cybersecurity expert at Stanford University. The answer is you don t, you just trust that the thing works.
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File photo of Russian president Vladimir Putin : Hackers believed to be acting on behalf of Russia stole data from the US governmentCredit: AP:Associated Press
When President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet at the White House Wednesday as Washington absorbed news of a massive data breach, the heads of most agencies relevant to the intrusion including the Department of Defense, the State Department, the Justice Department, the director of national intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency were absent.
After the meeting, Trump said nothing about the attack, which went undetected by his administration’s intelligence agencies for months. As those agencies now mobilize to assess the damage which the government said Thursday could be more widespread than initially thought, posing a “grave risk to the federal government” the President himself remains silent on the matter, preoccupied instead with his election loss and his invented claims of widespread voter