U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press in the James Brady White House press conference room on November 20, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Tasos Katopodis | Getty Images
President Donald Trump suggested on Saturday that China could have been behind a cyberattack affecting several U.S. government agencies and companies, despite the allegation hours before Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Russia was behind the ‘attack.
The claim adds confusion to an already complex situation, as cybersecurity workers are struggling to figure out a hack that came to light less than a week ago. At the time, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the attackers were affiliated with Russia.
“Russia is the priority song when anything happens because Lamestream is, for financial reasons mostly, petrified of …….. discussing the possibility of it being China (it can be!),” Trump wrote in a couple tweets.
Russia has been a sensitive issue for Trump. An investigation led by Robert Mueller found that the Russian government had interfered in the 2016 elections that led to Trump becoming president. Trump said in 2019 that he had never worked for Russia, after the New York Times reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had begun investigating whether he had been influenced by the Kremlin.
Shares of management software maker SolarWinds fell nearly 40% last week, during which it became clear how many organizations installed software updates that had included a vulnerability that attackers had probably introduced between March and June. Cisco, Microsoft and VMware are some of the companies that have said in recent days that they were affected.
The Department of Energy confirmed Thursday that the attack had reached its business networks. Last weekend the Commerce Department said it had been breached and NBC News reported that the White House National Security Council said it was investigating a possible violation in the Treasury Department.
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican representing Florida, said in a tweet Saturday that it was “increasingly clear that Russian intelligence carried out the most serious cyber intrusion in our history.”
SolarWinds has not blamed a specific country.
“Although security professionals and other experts have attributed the attack to an external nation-state, we have not independently verified the identity of the attacker,” the company said in a regulatory filing Thursday.
I’LL SEE: The scope of the alleged Russian pirates grows as more organizations reveal breaches