Washington – Incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain blamed the Trump administration for confusing messages to the massive cyberattack who addressed dozens of U.S. agencies and corporations, saying the federal government should speak with a “clear and unequivocal voice” about who is behind the hacking.
“We should listen to a clear and unequivocal assignment of responsibilities from the White House, from the intelligence community. They are the ones responsible. They are the ones who should make those messages and understand the responsibility,” Klain said. he said Sunday in an interview with “Face the Nation.” “Instead, what we’ve heard is a message from the Secretary of State, a different message from the White House, a different message from the president’s Twitter feed.”
Several government agencies, including the Treasury, Energy and State departments, revealed that they were the victims of a massive cyberespionage campaign, which is believed to be the work of Russian hackers. The authors infiltrated computer networks using a widely used software product from SolarWinds, a Texas-based company with thousands of customers.
While the full extent of the hacking is unclear, a growing number of federal agencies have revealed that they were among the affected organizations and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency said last week that the intrusion, which spans several countries , poses a “serious risk” to government and private networks. SolarWinds said there was an “outside nation state” behind the gap, though the Kremlin has denied its involvement.
On Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told conservative radio presenter Mark Levin that “we can say very clearly that it was the Russians who participated in this activity.” But on Saturday, President Trump contradicted his secretary of state, suggesting on Twitter that China could be behind the cyber campaign and accusing the media of blowing the gap disproportionately.
Klain said President-elect Joe Biden and members of his transition team have been briefed on the hacking, but said that “in terms of publicly communicating our government’s position, this must come from the current government and it should come clearly and unequivocally. “
“Official statements about who is responsible for this particular attack must come from the administration in a clear and unambiguous manner,” he said.
Biden said in a statement last week that the intrusions were “a matter of great concern” and promised to impose “substantial costs on those responsible.”
“He is going to take steps as president to degrade the ability of foreign actors to launch such attacks on our country,” Klain reiterated Sunday.
However, he noted that there is uncertainty about the purpose of the attacks.
‘Were they oriented towards espionage? Were they designed to cause us harm? “, Klain said, adding” there are still many unanswered questions about the purpose, nature and scope of these specific attacks. “
More than 300,000 companies use SolarWinds products, but Kevin Mandia, CEO of cybersecurity company FireEye, which discovered the breach, said about 50 organizations or companies were directly affected.
“It wasn’t a car shot on the information highway. It was a sniper shot from someone a mile away from your house. It was special operations. And I was going to do special operations to detect that gap, “Mandia said Facing the Nation.” So the way they did it was in a totally clandestine way, very hard to say. “
Mandia said a foreign nation was “definitely” behind the cyberattack, but said it is crucial that the government is 100% sure who was responsible for ensuring a proportionate response.
“The amount of resources within the government, within the private sector and the scope we have, we can speculate on or we can do a little more work and put a neon sign on the building of the people who did this.” , he said. “And I am very confident as we continue the investigation, as it becomes more extensive, as more people learn the tools, tactics and procedures of this attack, we will recover it and gain attribution.”