What Matters: The suspected Russian hack of the US government, explained cnn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cnn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Ina Fried hosted a conversation on the social impact of Big Data, featuring Rep.
Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) and former U.S. chief technology officer and founder and CEO of shift7,
Megan Smith.
Megan Smith. unpacked how data can help solve some of the biggest equity issues across our economy and society today, and the importance of having everyone at the table.
On solving social issues that are exacerbated by new technologies: It s just not for the tech community to decide [how to fix this] on behalf of all of us, especially because they face extraordinary bias in their hiring practices and their teams dismissiveness of people who are not of a certain group.
On Thursday,
Politico reported the hackers broke into the US Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the country s nuclear weapons stockpile. However, it remains unclear what the culprits might have accessed.
On the same day, the cybersecurity division under the Department of Homeland Security warned the massive breach was pulled off using a variety of tactics. “CISA has evidence of additional initial access vectors, other than the SolarWinds Orion platform; however, these are still being investigated,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in the alert.
The additional access vectors refers to a report from the cybersecurity firm Volexity, which revealed evidence the same culprits hacked a think tank by exploiting a vulnerability in its Microsoft Exchange Control Panel. The attackers then bypassed the multi-factor authentication system to access a victim s email inbox.
Microsoft Says 40 Customers Hit By Ongoing Hack Of Government Agencies
Friday, December 18, 2020
Microsoft President Brad Smith said the hack into IT management firm SolarWinds affected dozens of Microsoft s customers.
Altaf Qadri / AP
Microsoft President Brad Smith has called the ever-growing hacking campaign into a U.S. tech firm that was discovered this week a moment of reckoning. This is not espionage as usual, even in the digital age. Instead, it represents an act of recklessness that created a serious technological vulnerability for the United States and the world, he wrote in a blog post Thursday.
Smith said 40 of Microsoft s customers were also hit by the breach because they had the SolarWinds software targeted by suspected Russian hackers. At least 80% of customers were in the U.S., but the rest were in Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Spain, the U.K., Israel and the United Arab Emirates. He said he expects the number of victims to grow.
By Bill Galluccio
Microsoft Unveils New Surface Laptop
The fallout from a major hacking campaign, believed to be conducted by Russia, continues to grow. In a blog post, Microsoft said that it was one of the numerous organizations that were using malware-infected software from SolarWinds. The company said that its IT management software was infected with malware, which allowed hackers to gain access to the computer systems of over 18,000 organizations around the world, including several U.S. government agencies.
Microsoft said it removed the malware from its systems and has identified more than 40 customers using its Defender Anti-Virus software that were infected with the malware. The company said it expects the number of victims to grow as it continues to investigate the massive hack.