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The Trump administration acknowledged on Sunday that hackers acting on behalf of a foreign government — almost certainly a Russian intelligence agency, according to federal and private experts — broke into a range of key government networks, including in the Treasury and Commerce Departments, and had free access to their email systems.

Officials said a hunt was on to determine if other parts of the government had been affected by what looked to be one of the most sophisticated, and perhaps among the largest, attacks on federal systems in the past five years. Several said national security-related agencies were also targeted, though it was not clear whether the systems contained highly classified material.

The Trump administration said little in public about the hack, which suggested that while the government was worried about Russian intervention in the 2020 election, key agencies working for the administration — and unrelated to the election — were actually the subject of a sophisticated attack that they were unaware of until recent weeks.

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,” John Ullyot, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement. The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, whose leader was fired by President Trump last month for declaring that there had been no widespread election fraud, said in a statement that it had been called in as well.

The Commerce Department acknowledged that one of its agencies had been affected, without naming it. But it appeared to be the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which helps determine policy for internet-related issues, including setting standards and blocking imports and exports of technology that is considered a national security risk.

It was a measure of the sudden panic sweeping federal offices that the Department of Homeland Security ordered all agencies late Sunday night to shut down any use of a complex piece of network management software made by a company called SolarWinds and installed on networks belonging to government agencies and American corporations.

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The order was so urgent that it gave a deadline of noon on Monday for “a completion report” confirming that the software was no longer in use.

But that was clearly too late for intrusions that have been underway for months. The malign code was entered when the hackers broke into the periodic automatic updates of the software, much like when an iPhone is updated overnight. SolarWinds has traced those intrusions back to the springtime. That means the hackers have had free rein for much of the year, though it is not clear how many email and other systems they chose to enter.

FireEye, a computer security firm that first raised the alarm about the Russian campaign after its own systems were pierced, said the so-called supply chain attack — going after outside products that are introduced into computer networks — constituted “top-tier operational tradecraft.”

The motive for the attack on the agency and the Treasury Department remains elusive, two people familiar with the matter said. One government official said it was too soon to tell how damaging the attacks were and how much material was lost, but according to several corporate officials, the attacks had been underway as early as this spring, meaning they continued undetected through months of the pandemic and the election season.

Nicholas Kristof: A behind-the-scenes look at Nicholas Kristof’s gritty journalism, as he travels around the world.

News of the breach, reported earlier by Reuters, came less than a week after the National Security Agency, which is responsible for breaking into foreign computer networks and defending the most sensitive U.S. national security systems, issued a warning that “Russian state-sponsored actors” were exploiting flaws in a system broadly used in the federal government.

At the time, the N.S.A. refused to give further details of what had prompted the urgent warning. Shortly afterward, FireEye announced that hackers working for a state had stolen some of its prized tools for finding vulnerabilities in its clients’ systems — including the federal government’s. That investigation also pointed toward the S.V.R., one of Russia’s leading intelligence agencies. It is often called Cozy Bear or A.P.T. 29, and it is known as a traditional collector of intelligence.

FireEye’s clients, including the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence agencies, hire the firm to conduct ingenious but benign hacks of their systems using the company’s large database of techniques it has seen around the world. Its “red team” tools — essentially imitating a real hacker — are used to plug security holes in networks. So the hackers who stole FireEye’s tools have added to their arsenal. But it appears that FireEye was hardly their only victim.

Wickedfact:
Massachusetts Street in Uyo. Dumb liar.
With the kind of nonsense you typed, you can NEVER pass US visa interview. You need to improve your IQ.

Never4getU:
Trump my guy

doggedfighter:
Trump is a shame

Moferere:
January 20, 2021.
Goodbye Trump

The Michigan State Board of Canvassers voted Monday to certify the state's presidential election results, a victory for President-elect Joe Biden and a major blow to President Donald Trump's withering effort to contest the results.

The two Democrats on the four-member board were joined by one of its two Republicans to vote in favor of certification. The other Republican board member abstained. NBC News has projected Biden as the winner in Michigan, where the president-elect leads Trump by over 150,000 votes.

It comes as Trump's allies and lawyers had called for state legislatures, including Michigan's, to name Trump electors in states won by President-elect Joe Biden. They have also made unfounded claims about irregularities and discrepancies in the vote tallies — singling out Wayne County, which includes Detroit and its large Black population.



Trump invited Republican state lawmakers from Michigan — state Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield — to the White House last week. Critics saw it as an attempt to influence the certification process, but the lawmakers said afterward that they were not "made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan."

In a joint statement issued after their approximately two-hour visit to the White House, the Michigan lawmakers said their position that the voters are the ones who pick the state's electors was unchanged.

moneyshop:
We were told then by some people (not in church), that Pope JP II will be the last Pope. That once he dies, 666 will take over.

Some people can cook lies eeehhhh

Thank goodness I later run graduation with First classes in English Languwage, I can now detector that they was lying to us then. So that we shall repentance.

Probably, there's truth in every smoke

Pecuman:
And you literally still believe renaissance dark age myth. Fine, "dark ages" Europe paled in comparison to alter eras but that is to be expected in a region that continued it growth from the "dark ages" without catastrophic invasions to disrupt them.

There was some intentional destruction of classical art works but much, much more was presented only by the intentional preservation work of Monks and Churches. Compare what we know of pre-dark age Europe vs pre-dark age Ancient Greece, pre-dark age Axum or pre-dark age Maurayan India and you will see the Stark difference in volume of what was preserved.

We literally have works from Aristotle, Caesar, Lucian of Samosarta and many, many other works that were preserved through dark ages Europe, while after ancient Greece went through its dark age, it libraries vanished and written language gone, when Axum went through a dark age almost all written down records of Axum went, when India went through a dark age, we basically forgot that one of its greatest Emperors, Ashoka the great, ever existed.

Without intentional and expensive work by the Church and monistaries to protect pre-christian knowledge, the same would have happened in Europe and we would barely know a thing about Rome.

Except at worst anything the Christian governments did was stop supporting Pagan schools, schools of which had stopped innovating for centuries, like name any Greek scientist that invented something or some new idea wasn't from the ancient Era, the closest we have was a Christian that gave our first recorded example of experimental methodology in knowledge (so closest ancient thing to a real scientist).

The Pagans weren't even banned in the East before they disappeared and in the West, they weren't the ones associate with any sort of "science". Like for example Charlemagne had to issue laws in the newly conquered Saxons territories to stop Witch accusations and lynchings. Is that the supposed "science" that was in opposition to Christianity?

By the time that there was any official law making Paganism illegal in Christian states in the West, was during Charlemagne's regin. Before then the worst was to be banished from the centres of power, even the first few examples of people killed by the state for exposing heretical thought were against the Church's recommendation and done under what was already considered illegal by secular authorities. (Usually accusation of using sorcery against people, which was a civil offence in the Roman court among many other peoples as well, including the Mongols and Chinese).

Or in other words, by the time that being one of your "anyone (scientist, philosophers and independent thinkers) who stood in the way" those practically didn't exist in the boundaries of Christian states and we're more subversive foreign elements.

Pecuman:
I think you are ignoring where I wrote "every post-christianity", Yes anicient Greece and Egypt were Civilizations before Christianity but almost(in the historical sense) as soon as Christianity appeared, those regions became Christian and the projected quality of life of the inhabitants of those regions were better in that early Christianity period than during their ancient Civilization periods. (Although this is as much because of cumulative improvements in technology since the ancient period).

Most of these Civilizations in their ancient incarnations were worse places to live in for the average person than in their Christian incarnations. The majority of the population of Greece were slaves in Ancient times and Ancient Agricultural techniques that Egypt used were back breaking.

Pecuman:
Norse won't really be considered a Civilization by the stricter definition until they converted and I said post-christianity.

Polytheistic Greek and Egyptian civilization were long Christianized by then and all their main competition (Zoroastrians, Confucians, Dharmic) were all Monotheistic or Pantheistic (One God but many manifestations)

Pecuman:
Post Christianity basically every advanced state, except maybe the Hindus were some version of belief in a unitary supreme being/force.