‘Foreign affairs US does not get hackers from network after three months’

The State Department has reportedly still failed to completely isolate a computer attack. Three months ago, it became clear that hackers had penetrated the network.

That reports The Wall Street Journal. According to the business paper, hackers have managed to penetrate the non-secret part of the State Department’s email network. After the hack was discovered three months ago, government employees together with the NSA tried to isolate the hackers, among other things by taking the system partly offline. However, this still would not have worked: the attackers would still be able to evade detection with the help of subtle changes to their hacking tools.

According to the US State Department, there are no signs yet that the hackers have obtained information labeled ‘secret’. Nevertheless, sensitive information can also be sent by employees via the non-secret part of the e-mail network.

Although the State Department has not yet officially said who the suspected attackers are, anonymous sources have said that the hackers are believed to be working for the Russian government. The use of hacking tools previously used by suspected Russian hackers is the most important indication.

The hackers are said to have broken in last fall after a State Department employee clicked a link in a phishing email. The infected system would then have been used as a springboard to infect other computers of the ministry with the help of hacking tools. Despite the fact that the government network is divided into containers, according to the authorities, the attackers still managed to infect a large number of systems.