[Rooters] Hackers backed by a foreign government have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury Department and an agency that decides internet and telecommunications policy, according to people familiar with the matter.
Hillary?
"The United States government is aware of these reports and we are taking all necessary steps to identify and remedy any possible issues related to this situation," said National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot.
There is concern within the U.S. intelligence community that the hackers who targeted the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration used a similar tool to break into other government agencies, according to three people briefed on the matter. The people did not say which other agencies.
Mumble mumble...FBI, CIA, ...
The hack is so serious it led to a National Security Council meeting at the White House on Saturday, said one of the people familiar with the matter.
The hack involves the NTIA's office software, Microsoft's Office 365. Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months, sources said.
comforting
A Microsoft spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The hackers are "highly sophisticated" and have been able to trick the Microsoft platform's authentication controls, according to a person familiar with the incident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the press.
"This is a nation state," said a different person briefed on the matter. "We just don't know which one yet."
China, China, China, Iran, Russia, China?
| If China or Russia, this is non-WoT, so lets leave it there until we have evidence to move it to WoT. |
The full scope of the hack is unclear. The investigation is still its early stages and involves a range of federal agencies, including the FBI, according to the three people familiar with the matter.
The FBI, Homeland Security Department's cybersecurity division, known as CISA, and U.S. National Security Agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment
The US government has not publicly identified who might be behind the hacking, but three of the people familiar with the investigation said Russia is currently believed to be responsible for the attack. Two of the people said that the breaches are connected to a broad campaign that also involved the recently disclosed hack on FireEye, a major US cybersecurity company with government and commercial contracts.
In a statement posted to Facebook, the Russian foreign ministry described the allegations as another unfounded attempt by the U.S. media to blame Russia for cyberattacks against U.S. agencies.
The cyber spies are believed to have gotten in by surreptitiously tampering with updates released by IT company SolarWinds, which serves government customers across the executive branch, the military, and the intelligence services, according to two people familiar with the matter. The trick - often referred to as a "supply chain attack" - works by hiding malicious code in the body of legitimate software updates provided to targets by third parties.
In a statement released late Sunday, the Austin, Texas-based company said that updates to its monitoring software released between March and June of this year may have been subverted by what it described as a "highly-sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation state."
The company declined to offer any further detail, but the sheer diversity of SolarWind's customer base has sparked concern within the US intelligence community that other government agencies may be at risk, according to four people briefed on the matter.
SolarWinds says on its website that its customers include most of America's Fortune 500 companies, the top 10 United States telecommunications providers, all five branches of the US military, the State Department, the National Security Agency, and the Office of President of the United States. 
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