Senator Ron Wyden, in June 2020. -

Anna Moneymaker / POOL / AFP

The massive cyberattack that targeted the United States also hit computer systems used by senior Treasury officials, the equivalent of the Department of Finance.

Hackers may have stolen critical encryption keys, Senator Ron Wyden said on Monday.

The hacking at the ministry "seems important", said the elected official, who sits on both the Intelligence and Finance committees in the Senate.

Dozens of email accounts have been compromised, he said in a statement.

"In addition, the hackers broke into systems in the division of the offices of department heads, which hosts the most senior department managers," he said.

"The Treasury still ignores all the actions committed by the hackers or what information was precisely stolen," he notes.

Suspicions about Moscow

The US government admitted last week that a massive cyberattack targeted US government agencies and several senior officials including Justice Minister Bill Barr and foreign minister Mike Pompeo blamed Moscow, which strongly denied.

The attack began in March, with hackers taking advantage of an update to monitoring software developed by a Texas company, SolarWinds, used by tens of thousands of businesses and governments around the world.

Lack of preparation

Among the affected ministries are the State Department, Commerce, Treasury, Homeland Security and National Institutes of Health, officials say, but say they fear that many others are as well.

The internal tax department has not seen any signs that it has been affected or that taxpayer data has been stolen, according to Ron Wyden.

The senator sharply criticized the government for its lack of preparation for the threat.

The government "has suffered an attack which appears to involve clever hackers, who have stolen encryption keys from government servers", he notes.

This happened despite warnings from cybersecurity experts that encryption keys are "compelling targets for hackers," he lamented.

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