WASHINGTON (AP) – Contradiction of Secretary of State and other senior officials, President Donald Trump suggested without evidence that China – not Russia – could be behind the cyberespionage operation against the United States and tried to minimize its impact.
In his first comments on the breach, Trump mocked the focus on the Kremlin and downplayed the intrusions, which the nation’s cybersecurity agency has warned it was raising. a “serious” risk to government and private networks.
“Cyber Hack is much bigger in fake media than today. I have been fully informed and everything is well under control, “Trump tweeted on Saturday. He also claimed that the media are “petrified” of “discussing the possibility that it is China (maybe!”).
There is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday that Russia was “pretty clear” behind the operation against the United States.
“It was a very important effort and I think it is the case that we can now say very clearly that it was the Russians who participated in this activity,” Pompeo said in an interview with radio show host Mark Levin .
White House officials had been willing to issue a statement Friday afternoon accusing Russia of being the “main actor” in the piracy, but were told at the last minute to withdraw, according to an official of the US who knew the conversations spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
It is unclear whether Pompey received this message before his interview, but officials are now fighting to figure out how to square the disparate accounts. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the statement or on the basis of Trump’s claims. The State Department also did not answer questions about Pompey’s statements.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has refused to blame Russia for well-documented hostilities, including his interference in the 2016 election to help him get elected. He blamed his predecessor, Barack Obama, for the annexation of Crimea by Russia, which has approved allowing Russia to return to the G-7 group of nations and has never taken the country on task for allegedly rewarding soldiers. Americans in Afghanistan.
“The president has a blind spot when it comes to Russia,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah. He told NBC on Sunday in “Meet the Press” that Trump “does not want to recognize Russia as the problem they are and the extraordinary bad actor they are on the world stage …. The reality is that Russia is really a geopolitical adversary. against us on all fronts ”.
Pompeo, in the interview, said the government was still “unpacking” the cyberespionage operation and that probably some of them would remain classified.
“But suffice it to say that there was a major effort to use third-party software to basically incorporate code into U.S. government systems and now private business systems and companies and governments from around the world are also appearing. “, he said. .
While Pompeo was the first Trump administration official to publicly blame Russia for the intrusion, cybersecurity experts and other U.S. officials have been clear over the past week that the operation appears to be Russia’s work. There has been no credible suggestion that any other country, including China, is responsible.
Congress Democrats who have received classified briefings have also publicly stated that Russia, which in 2014 hacked the State Department and interfered by hacking in the 2016 presidential election, was behind it.
It’s unclear what hackers were looking for, but experts say it could include nuclear secrets, plans for advanced weapons, COVID-19 vaccine-related research, and dossier information on government and industry leaders.
Russia has said it had “nothing to do” with piracy.
While Trump downplayed the impact of hackers, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency said it compromised federal agencies and “critical infrastructure.” Homeland Security, the agency’s main department, defines this infrastructure as any “vital” asset to the U.S. or its economy, a broad category that could include power plants and financial institutions.
A U.S. official, who spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity to discuss an issue being investigated, described the hack as serious and extremely damaging.
“It seems to be the worst case of piracy in American history,” the official said. “They got into everything.”
Trump had been silent on the hacks before Saturday.
On Friday, White House Press Secretary Brian Morgenstern declined to discuss the matter, but told reporters that National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien had sometimes been conducting multiple daily meetings with the ‘FBI, Department of Homeland Security and intelligence agencies, looking for ways to mitigate the hack.
“Rest assured that we work on it every day the best and brightest,” he said.
Democratic leaders from four House committees that have received classified briefings by the administration on piracy have complained that “they were left with more questions than answers.”
“Administration officials were unwilling to share the full scope of the rape and the identity of the victims,” they said.
Pompeo, in the interview with Levin, said that Russia is on the list of “people who want to undermine our lifestyle, our republic, our basic democratic principles. … You will see the news of the day regarding their efforts in cyberspace. We have seen this for a long time, using asymmetric capabilities to try to position ourselves in a place where they can impose costs in the United States.
What makes this piracy campaign so extraordinary is its scale: 18,000 organizations were infected from March to June by malicious code used by the popular network management software of a company in Austin, Texas, called SolarWinds.
It will take months to expel elite hackers from U.S. government networks that have been quietly arguing since March.
Experts say there are simply not enough qualified threat hunting teams to properly identify all government and private sector systems that may have been hacked. FireEye, the cybersecurity company that uncovered the intrusion on U.S. agencies and was among the victims, has already reported dozens of casualties. Run to identify more.
Many federal workers – and others in the private sector – have to assume that unclassified networks are full of spies. Agencies will be more inclined to do government business sensitive to Signal, WhatsApp and other encrypted smartphone apps.
If the hackers come from Russia’s foreign intelligence agency SVR, experts believe, their resistance may be tenacious.
The only way to ensure a network is clean is to “burn it to the ground and rebuild it,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard member.
Florida became the first state to recognize the victim of a SolarWinds attack. Officials told The Associated Press that apparently the hackers infiltrated the state health administration agency and others.
SolarWinds customers include most Fortune 500 companies and their U.S. governments are rich in generals and spymasters.
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Associated Press writers Frank Bajak in Boston, Eric Tucker in Washington, and Bobby Caina Calvan in Tallahassee, Florida, contributed to this report.