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| New York's four prosecutors had their offices hacked. (Photo by= Reuters) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] Nearly 30 top US prosecutors had their office's email accounts hacked during a major breach last year, the Justice Department says. The attack on users of the software SolarWinds which the US has blamed on Russia was the worst-ever cyber-espionage attack on the US government.
The department says 27 US attorneys had at least one office computer hacked. That has raised fears the hackers may have accessed sensitive information, including the names of informants. "It's potentially very serious," Gil Soffer, a former federal prosecutor, told the BBC. He added prosecutors' emails contain "very sensitive, very confidential and often very secret information". If the hackers got hold of secret informants' identities, they could use the information to "blow their cover," he added. The hack, which gave cyber-criminals potential access to 18,000 government and private computer networks, was made public last December. The department says hackers compromised the accounts as early as May 2020 - some seven months before the SolarWinds hack was made public. The department said all victims had been notified and it is working to mitigate "operational, security and privacy risks" caused by the hack.
Previously in April, US President Joe Biden's administration announced sanctions against Russia in response to the SolarWinds breach and other cyber attacks. Russia has denied any wrongdoing.
