Washington (AFP)
The massive Russian-blamed cyberattack that targeted the United States also hit computer systems used by senior Treasury officials and hackers may have stolen critical encryption keys, a senator said on Monday.
Ron Wyden, who sits on both the Intelligence and Finance Committees in the Senate, said after a closed-door briefing that the hacking in the ministry "appears significant".
Dozens of email accounts have been compromised, he said in a statement.
"In addition, the hackers broke into systems of 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.
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.
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 saw no signs that it was affected or that taxpayer data was stolen, according to 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.
pmh / jm / ahe / plh
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