The State Department has shut down its email system after it was reportedly hacked. The department’s entire unclassified email system was closed down to repair possible damage.
A senior US official said that the department detected “activity of concern” in its system, but added that the classified systems had not been compromised. The official also said that a similar security breach at the White House in October was probably part of the same attack.
It is still unclear who might have been responsible for the attacks on the State Department, though the earlier White House attack was blamed on hackers affiliated with the Russian government.
“The State Department, like any other large organization that has a global span, is a constant target of cyber attacks... And we detected activity of concern several weeks ago. And as a result, we immediately formed a team to develop and implement a response plan, in coordination with cybersecurity experts from DHS and from other agencies,” State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said.
“We are implementing carefully planned improvements to the security of our main unclassified network, taking advantage of a scheduled outage. Let me also highlight that no classified systems have been affected by this incident.” Rathke also said the “origins of the intrusion” are “under investigation.”
This is the latest in a series of security breaches at US government departments. In October, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that four of its websites suffered security breaches, cutting weather satellite data off for more than a week.
The same month, the internal systems belonging to USIS, a government contractor providing background checks for the Department of Homeland Security, were breached. Officials said at the time that the attackers – whom they believed to be state-sponsored, possibly by China – might have stolen information about DHS personnel.
Another hack, which targeted the US Postal Service in October, exposed the personal details and social security numbers of as many as 800,000 employees.
Peter Singer, an expert on cyber-security and the former director of the Brookings Institution’s Center For 21st Century Security and Intelligence, told the Guardian that while it is often impossible to know who is responsible for attacks like this, the attack “fits a pattern of known behaviour” for Russian cyber-criminals acting with the backing and support of the Russian government.
He said that the US needs to be ready for such attacks, and be prepared to be resilient to their effects, rather than hoping to prevent them altogether. “Sorry to let you know, but you’re never going to have 100% security,” he said. “Anyone who tells you otherwise is up to no good.”
“There is no wall high enough to keep the bad guys out.”
