Russian SolarWinds hackers strike again with email attack on 150 organizations including US government agencies
RUSSIAN spies behind the SolarWinds hack reportedly launched a phishing email attack on 150 organizations including federal government agencies.
The actor Nobelium targeted around 3,000 email accounts across 24 countries.
A quarter of the email accounts belonged to organizations working in human rights and international development, corporate vice president Tom Burt wrote in a
The cyberhack was reportedly conducted by Nobelium – the same actor that carried out the attacks on SolarWinds customers last year.
The spies gained access to an email service used by USAID - United States Agency for International Development.
Most of the attacks were blocked and Windows is in the process of contacting customers that were affected.
The number of successful intrusions remains unknown.
Mr. Burt tweeted: “This week we observed new nation-state cyberattacks targeting government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations. These attacks aren't slowing, and we must do more to stop them."
The hack comes just weeks after Republicans warned that DC’s response to cyberattacks is following the Colonial Pipeline shutdown.
Russian crime group hacked the pipeline, causing the shutdown of the main supplier of gasoline and diesel to the east coast.
Colonial Pipeline reportedly paid DarkSide in a ransom to retrieve its stolen data.
senator Lindsey Graham said Washington doesn’t understand how to “prevent” cybercrimes.
He said: “They don't understand prevention. Deterrence is achieved by changing our laws so that we can put people in jail and maybe even use the death penalty for cyberterrorism against members of DarkSide.”
Last year, reportedly hacked Microsoft and infiltrated a US nuclear weapons stockpile as part of a nine-month "virtual invasion" by Moscow.
The malware was isolated to business networks and didn’t affect US national security.
Hackers used various techniques, including the corruption of updates from network management app SolarWinds.
It's reported that the SolarWinds hack may have impacted thousands of companies and government agencies.
But, the actual damage of the cyber attack may take years to assess, experts admitted.
The client list for SolarWinds is broad and has included "425 of the companies listed on the Fortune 500 as well as the top 10 telecom operators in the United States," the reported.
Senators on the Armed Services Committee said at the time that the attack had “the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation”.
denied having any connection to the United States' hack via the Embassy in Washington.
Hackers believed to be acting on behalf of the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR breached and stole data from agencies within the Treasury Department and the US Department of Commerce, and .
The “sophisticated” also had free access to their email systems, reports said.
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It's not known if the systems contained highly classified material.
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SolarWinds said it believed the attack originated from an “outside nation-state” that worked by inserting malware into its updates between March and June last year.
The Times reported that the attack appears to be the largest on federal systems in the past five years.